E.D. Corner: August 2026

Bonjour,

Trish and I just spent two fantastic weeks in France. Three nights in Burgundy, four nights in Provence, three nights in Nice and four nights in Paris. As I find whenever I travel off continent, I am amazed by the preservation of history that takes place in the biggest cities to the smallest villages. Paris’ “downtown” isn’t actually in metropolitan Paris. The major financial district with its skyscrapers is located just outside of Paris, which has kept the history and splendor of old Paris alive and well. And where France, and most of the rest of Europe, has us beat is that old means old.

Our hotel in Beaune within Burgundy was an Abbey that was built sometime in the 1300s. In Avignon within Provence, the hotel was in a building from the 1600s. I think Nice was the 1700s as was our little apartment in Paris. Two of our places didn’t have elevators and the two that did were retrofitted around the spiral staircases used more typically to get to and from your room. We got lots of steps in, that is for sure! While lugging a 20kg suitcase up four levels of spiral staircases is inconvenient, the experience of staying in these historic places was excellent.

 

 

In France, there are several levels of protection for historic sites and buildings which leads businesses to be creative when trying to create a profitable enterprise. In fact, a building constructed in the 1700s may have more tourism value because it is 300 years old. Instead of “old building-liability-demolish-new hotel”, they focus on “old building-protected asset-restoration-unique hotel/business”. This leads to a premium visitor experience. And because they protect entire districts in France, the history of the buildings we stayed in extended throughout the neighbourhoods. Narrow cobblestone streets lined with shops/restaurants in other preserved buildings, monuments, landscaped public gardens, etc. In each of the places we stayed, the destination itself was the attraction.

 

 

The other thing that France does well is making outdoor spaces vibrant. Every restaurant and café had tables and chairs on the sidewalks. Larger pedestrian ways had permanent covered areas that were used by craft vendors in the morning and then taken over as patios by the restaurants in the afternoon. Musicians playing randomly. Even at the base of the Eiffel Tower, it looked like the people selling trinkets and trash had designated areas they could use. And there was a huge pop-up food market.

 

 

Everywhere we went, it was fun and interesting to be outside which, with daily temperatures averaging 37 degrees, was very important. Air conditioning in France wasn’t really a thing. Our “air conditioned” rooms got down to 33 degrees and our favourite accommodation didn’t have any air conditioning but did have two powerful portable fans that we could keep aimed directly at ourselves to feel a little better. I actually mentioned to Trish that I believe the lack of air conditioning is one of the reasons why people spent so much time outside. Inside was no better and with all of the amazing sights and sounds outside, it distracted you from the searing heat.

France gets a lot of visitors, both domestic and international. Paris was packed. Some of the attractions like the Louvre, the Palace at Versailles and the Eiffel Tower were elbow to elbow. The other three destinations (Burgundy, Provence and Nice) were all busy, but not overwhelmingly so. The major attractions at each of these locations had enough space to allow you to stop and learn more about what you were seeing.

 

Being a tourism person, I wanted to learn more about France’s visitor economy in comparison to our own. This led me down quite the rabbit hole, so strap in. I started where I usually do. Comparing populations and country size. My hypothesis is that large populations in smaller countries usually means that there is robust public transit infrastructure, which is something we took advantage of a lot in France.

• France has roughly 70 million people in comparison to Canada’s 42 million.
• France is half the size of Ontario.
• All of Europe is only 2% bigger (including Russia that makes up 40% of Europe’s size) than Canada. The total population is 744 million.
• In terms of population density, there are:
  • 73 people/km² in Europe
  • 4–5 people/km² in Canada
  • 122 people/km² in France
  • 17 people/km² in Ontario
  • 118 people/km² in Southern Ontario

It is safe to say that France as a country has a much higher population density than Canada and even Ontario as a whole. What I did find interesting is that 94% of Ontario’s population lives within Southern Ontario, which represents just over 10.5% of the total size of the province and is about 20% of the size of France. This concentration of people puts the population density close to France. While Southern Ontario has and continues to improve public transit, it currently does not compare to the networks throughout France.

The next thing I wanted to measure was visitation. While it is impossible to compare apples to apples, my thinking was that if all of Europe was the size of Canada, then I would consider other European countries’ visits to France the same as other province’s visits to Ontario.

• France welcomes approximately 100 million international visitors per year, of which 17-18% are from non-European countries.
• Ontario welcomes just over 20 million non-Ontarian visitors per year, of which 62% are not from Canada.
• The caveat here is that 49% of non-Ontarian visitors are from the U.S., but that still means that 13% are from overseas

To me, this means that Ontario is holding its own against France when it comes to visitation.  France has around 4.5x the population of Ontario and is welcoming about 5x as many visitors per year. Interestingly, both France and Ontario report visiting friends and relatives is the catalyst of 35-45% of all visits, meaning even the visitor mix is similar.

So, with the knowledge that our region has the population density to support tourism growth (while acknowledging that all tourism and hospitality businesses rely heavily on locals to keep the doors open), and the attractions to draw tourists as evidenced by current visitation numbers, the last thing I wanted to compare was investment.  This one proved to be a little more difficult because I wasn’t able to compare apples to apples.

One of the main differences is that France does not draw a line between tourism investment and community investment. They don’t need to classify maintaining a medieval square, restoring a church façade, operating a museum, landscaping a town centre, maintaining a public garden or programming a cultural festival as “tourism spending” for those investments to have enormous tourism value. In Ontario, everything is bucketed separately. Municipal parks are parks. Culture is culture. Downtown revitalization is economic development. Etc.

Culture and Heritage is by far France’s largest investment that has a positive effect on the visitor economy. It accounts for 4.5% of local budgets whereas Canada earmarks about 2.2% of its budget to recreation, culture and heritage combined. France is outspending Canada at a 2 to 1 rate on making sure that their towns are beautiful, their buildings are well maintained and the cultural assets are ready to be enjoyed. This leads to the notion that the destinations are the attraction.

The funny part is that because they invest so much money in making their towns and villages destinations, they don’t need to spend as much money convincing people to come visit. In 2025, they spent just 22.6M euros to bring in more than 100 million visitors.

What France recognizes is that investment in place creates compelling destinations and stories that drive visitation while creating pride for residents. They recognize the importance of these visitors to help the businesses thrive and keep the residents employed. Their funding is largely capital investments to preserve, maintain and expand the cultural and heritage significance that France is synonymous with. I had ChatGPT create a little comparison chart to help visualize.

 

Ecosystem element	France	Ontario
Destination marketing	🟢	🟢
Tourism organization funding	🟢🟢	🟢🟢
Culture investment	🟢🟢🟢🟢	🟢🟢
Heritage investment	🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢	🟢🟢
Public realm/placemaking	🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢	🟢🟢
Tourism capital investment	🟢🟢🟢🟢	🟢🟢
Municipal integration with tourism	🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢	🟢🟢
Tourism advertising	🟢🟢	🟢🟢🟢

 

When I go to Europe, I am always amazed by the heritage and history that is all around me. And that is because it is new and unfamiliar. Ontario, which by European timelines, is still in diapers, holds that same unfamiliarity to the 744 million people that call Europe home. Subdivisions, shopping malls, 12-lane highways, big box stores, “historic” downtowns will be as interesting to old world visitors as a medieval castle is to us.

What I took away from this vacation, and from my obsessive deep-dive comparing France to Ontario, is that we are in a good spot here in Southern Ontario. As we continue to work together to build destinations, we need to work with those at the various levels of government to grow those ever-important investments in placemaking and recognize that the visitor economy is embedded in almost every decision that they make. We are coming up to a municipal election and now is a great time to ask the candidates what their plans are to help make their municipal destinations the attraction.

Have a great day!

Chuck