MONTREAL — France saw a significant uptick in Canadian tourists in 2016, which is welcome news following a dip in tourism in 2015.

According to the 2017 Mémento du Tourisme, an annual survey conducted by the French Government’s DGE (Direction Genérale des Entreprises), while tourism in France contracted in 2016 due to the 2015 terror attacks (-2.2%), arrivals of Canadian tourists rose by 11% to reach 1,125,000. Among this number, an estimated 386,000 were “excursionists”.

Moreover, the average stay duration for Canadian visitors averaged 11 days, higher than the overall foreign visitors’ average duration of 6.8 days.

This ranks Canada as France’s 13th market in terms of arrivals, and 10th in the total overnights spent in the country. In total, Canadians recorded 11.4 million overnights in 2016.

Tourism spending in France reached 159 billion euros last year, representing 7.1% of the country’s GDP.

The five most visited regions by foreign travellers are: Paris and Ile de France, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, New Aquitaine, and Brittany. France remains the most visited country in the world, with 82.6 million arrivals of international tourists in 2016, and ranks fifth worldwide in terms of tourism revenue (38.4 billion euros).