Tourism to Paris is expected to recover from the impact of November's terror attack within 13 months, according to research by the World Trade and Tourism Council (WTTC).
Its study, which looked at 32 countries that had been affected by a range of crises between 2001 and 2014, found that this was how long it took on average for visitor numbers to return to previous levels following a terrorist attack.
French military patrolling near the Eiffel Tower in January Photo: EPA
The US last month issued a worldwide travel alert, which it is thought will deter many from visiting, while a Telegraph Travel poll earlier this month found that 45 per cent of more than 6,000 readers said they were less likely to go to the French capital.
Major attractions in the French capital, including the Eiffel Tower, have now reopened, but there remains a high threat from terrorism within France and its capital, according to the Foreign Office. The country is in the midst of a three-month national state of emergency, it warns, and travellers are advised to allow time for any disruption that heightened security measures by French authorities may cause.
The average recovery time for a country following a terrorism crisis was found to quicker than those affected by disease or environmental disaster, after which it takes 21 months and 24 months to recover, respectively, the study revealed.
Tourists posing outside the Versaille Castle in Paris, days after the shootings this November Photo: Fotolia/AP
Political turmoil was found to have the greatest impact on recovery time, taking an average of 27 months for a country to return to “business as usual”.
“There is a less definite end point to political turmoil, so it can take more time for potential tourists to trust the stability of the destination,” a spokesperson for the WTTC told Telegraph Travel.
The context of a terrorist attack was found to have a greater influence on its impact in a country than its scale, as demonstrated in the 2002 and 2005 bombings in Indonesia compared to the bombings in Madrid.
The Madrid bombing had a similar death toll as the larger of the Indonesian attacks but a significantly lower (nearly insignificant) impact on tourist arrivals, according to the findings.
Full recovery from environmental disasters have inevitably been more drawn out because of the time often required to rebuild damaged infrastructure before it can welcome any tourists back to the country, which was found to be the case following the 2004 tsunami in Thailand, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and the 2011 earthquake in Japan.
Commuters in July 2005 at the Aldgate Tube station, one of three stations hit by the bombings earlier that month Photo: Getty Images
While the 2001 9/11 attacks were not covered by the WTTC's study, other recent research in collaboration with the USTA (US Travel Association) revealed that the US saw 2.4 million fewer international arrivals in 2009 than in 2000. Britain saw a 36 per cent increase in long-haul travel worldwide, but a 15 per cent drop in travel to the US in the same time period.
The enforcement of stricter US immigration laws following the 9/11 attacks was also said to have contributed to the drop in visitors to the US. None of the countries examined in the latest WTTC study responded as strongly to the terrorist attack, in terms of immigration changes, as the US did.
Tourism contributed to 8.9 per cent of France's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2014, a figure expected to rise by three per cent by the end of 2015. Earlier this year, France was reported to be the world's most visited country, with 83.7 million visitors last year. Around 17 million British nationals visit France every year, the Foreign Office reports.
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