a Notre-Dame de Paris made of ice, to make Chinese tourists want to go to France again

The Minister for Tourism, Olivia Grégoire, inaugurated a replica of Notre-Dame de Paris at the Harbin ice sculpture festival in northern China. Objective: to convince Chinese tourists to choose France, while their attendance is struggling to return to pre-Covid levels.

France wants the return of Chinese tourists, a very spending clientele but which almost completely disappeared during the three years of Covid. Today the recovery has begun, but we are still far from the level before the epidemic, in 2019.

The French Minister for Tourism, Olivia Grégoire, traveled to China this Friday to promote the France destination. On this occasion, a reproduction of Notre-Dame Cathedral in ice was unveiled in the Chinese Far North.

It is one of the most popular events in China, every winter hundreds of thousands of Chinese travel to Harbin to visit the ice sculpture festival. A pop-up amusement park where the public can admire immense ice sculptures which light up in the evening at -30°C.

This year, visitors flock to the festival’s novelty: a huge reproduction of Notre-Dame de Paris. The building is impressive at 22 meters high. More than 3,000 m3 of ice were needed and 170 sculptors worked on the site for two weeks. “When the river freezes, around September, preparations begin”says an employee. “The ice is first cut into pieces by large machines, the monuments are then built piece by piece and then it is the sculptors who work the ice.”

Catch up with pre-Covid attendance levels

The ice cathedral is inaugurated with great fanfare by Minister for Tourism Olivia Gégroire. “It’s a wonderful way to celebrate France”she rejoices, “to make it known here in Harbin, and to remind that Notre Dame will be open to embrace Chinese tourists again within a few months, in December 2024.”

The objective is to promote the France destination through this reproduction, and it seems to work quite well. “It’s Notre-Dame de Paris, I know because they are images that I have seen in books or on the internet”describes a resident. “The architecture is very beautiful. We saw the building from a distance and immediately came over to take a photo.”

“I would like to visit France and Notre-Dame de Paris. The girls and boys in France are very polite and gentlemen, that makes me want to go there.”

A Chinese tourist

at franceinfo

Before Covid, in 2019, two million Chinese tourists came to France. Today, we are very far from this level, due in particular to a restart of the visa system on the French side which is not yet optimal. Some Chinese tourists prefer to submit their files to Italians or Spaniards where the processing is perceived to be faster. The Minister for Tourism assures that the issue is in the process of being normalized. She announced that fifteen new visa processing centers will be opened across China. In spring 2023, it took three months to obtain a visa for France. According to Olivia Grégoire, the deadline is now three to four weeks.

In France, professionals are waiting with great impatience for the return of the Chinese, a clientele known to be very spendthrift. In 2019, Chinese tourism generated nearly 3.5 billion euros in revenue.