In the first four months of 2017, Paris saw an all-time record 2.6 million foreign visitors, in an upswing that began towards the end of 2016. This is a 19 percent increase from the same period last year.
The Moulin Rouge, the most famous cabaret in the world, was only about three quarters full on an average night in 2016. Jean-Victor Clerico, an official at Moulin Rouge, called it a "black year." The dropoff in tourism reportedly cost the country 1.3 billion euros.
A combination of attacks, like the one in November 2015 when suicide bombers and gunmen killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more in the French capital by striking bars, restaurants, a stadium and a concert hall, contributed to dropping tourist numbers, along with bad weather and labor reforms.
Then-French President Francois Hollande called the attacks "an act of war" perpetrated by Daesh extremists.
The July 2016 attack in Nice, in which 84 people were killed after a truck plowed into a crowd watching a fireworks display, was also a factor.
Agence France-Presse quoted 68-year-old American traveller Rinkie Pollack as saying it doesn’t make sense to let the fear of an attack deter people from travelling because, "If it's your time, it's your time."
"There's nowhere in the world where you're safe."
Overall tourist arrivals in France are expected to rise five to six percent in 2017, according to the Tourism Ministry, which would set a record of 89 million visitors.
"Paris remains the top tourist destination in the world,” Frédéric Valletoux, president of the Regional Tourism Committee of Paris Île-de-France, told the Independent.
Britain, Belgium and Germany saw a number of terror attacks as well, which caused "a kind of fatalism" according to Josette Sicsic, who heads Touriscope, which tracks the behavior of tourists.
Paris Tourism Office Director Nicolas Lefebvre believes the reason tourism numbers are picking back up is because people are becoming less rattled by terror attacks as they become more frequent. "The constant repetition of these events — there have been several in a few months, thankfully less deadly — has made them sort of part of the landscape, and it no longer stops people from imagining, thinking about and organizing a trip to Europe, and to Paris in particular," he said.
