Europe essentially remains in the doldrums, and the French economy begins to look more like Italy's or Spain's and less like Germany's, while the Germans feel the drag of the rest of the region. The various Eurozone governments talk about increasing spending and lowering taxes after a bout of raising taxes and lowering spending. And of course, interest rates stay low to facilitate any chance of sustaining even tepid growth.
France begins to wake up to reality—propping up the pension state is a tall order even if the economy ever can get untracked—an open question. Locals in Paris (where I recently visited) despair of the lack of high paying financial and tech sector jobs and burdensome tax rates. If you think college grads are having a hard time cracking into the work force in the U.S., French 20-somethings face a brick wall. “Everybody is going to London,” explains a friend, just returned from visiting her sister who has relocated across the English Channel—not that the UK economy is anything to crow about either.
But France has something going for it—and Paris in particular. It's a major tourist destination. You know, the food, the wine, the City of Lights, romance, that ooh la la. It's hard to pin down the exact number, but somewhere between 25 million and 30 million tourists visit Paris annually. Even in the February chill, people from all over (and so many American voices) queued up at the familiar attractions—the Orsay, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower (of course), and at the Louvre. I have never seen a museum corridor more mobbed than the one funneling the hordes crowding to view the Mona Lisa. Over the past number of decades I have regularly visited Mona and she always draws a gathering, but this was over the top and she has been around for nearly 600 years.
With Paris the major calling card, France rates as the number one foreign tourist destination in the world, and that generates a lot of business. The bartender at my hotel was certainly content. Waiters, airport workers, front desk clerks, maids, tour promoters, museum guards, and anyone touching the tourist industry enjoys relative job security. The New York Soho effect—international boutique brands pushing out Mom and Pop stores—is alive and well in the Marais Jewish quarter too, while McDonalds stands out (like a sore thumb) along the Champs Elysees. Paris has even added a gigantic-lighted portable ferris wheel (like London's, Chicago's and just about everywhere else's-- Staten Island too) outside the Tuileries marring the Arc de Triomphe-Louvre Pyramid axis. As if Paris needs something to appeal to low brow tourist tastes.
Still a business center and world capital, Paris maybe morphing by necessity into more of an adult Disney like destination dependent on hotel, restaurant, and site seeing business mostly from the global elites who can afford to enjoy the scene, munch on a baguette and sip an expresso. But is that the future of one of the world's greatest cities—maintaining itself as a tourist magnet, because that's all that will be left?
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Jonathan D. Miller
A marketing communication strategist who turned to real estate analysis, Jonathan D. Miller is a foremost interpreter of 21st citistate futures – cities and suburbs alike – seen through the lens of lifestyles and market realities. For more than 20 years (1992-2013), Miller authored Emerging Trends in Real Estate, the leading commercial real estate industry outlook report, published annually by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute (ULI). He has lectures frequently on trends in real estate, including the future of America's major 24-hour urban centers and sprawling suburbs. He also has been author of ULI’s annual forecasts on infrastructure and its What’s Next? series of forecasts. On a weekly basis, he writes the Trendczar blog for GlobeStreet.com, the real estate news website. Outside his published forecasting work, Miller is a prominent communications/institutional investor-marketing strategist and partner in Miller Ryan LLC, helping corporate clients develop and execute branding and communications programs. He led the re-branding of GMAC Commercial Mortgage to Capmark Financial Group Inc. and he was part of the management team that helped build Equitable Real Estate Investment Management, Inc. (subsequently Lend Lease Real Estate Investments, Inc.) into the leading real estate advisor to pension funds and other real institutional investors. He joined the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S. in 1981, moving to Equitable Real Estate in 1984 as head of Corporate/Marketing Communications. In the 1980's he managed relations for several of the country's most prominent real estate developments including New York's Trump Tower and the Equitable Center. Earlier in his career, Miller was a reporter for Gannett Newspapers. He is a member of the Citistates Group and a board member of NYC Outward Bound Schools and the Center for Employment Opportunities.
