It was once the Americans, then the Japanese, then the Russians. Now it’s the Chinese.
In recent months, Paris has been dominated by the Chinese, who have begun to travel abroad in large numbers, and who come here less to eat than to shop. According to Atout France, the French tourism development agency, individual visas are still expensive and restricted for Chinese visitors. So they come mostly on bus tours organized back home, usually for trips of 10 to 15 days that often start in Germany, with stops in Switzerland, Italy or the Netherlands. They almost always end in Paris, and it is in Paris that most do their shopping.
Last year, Chinese visitors spent about US$890 million in France, 60 percent more than in 2009, according to Atout France.
Photo: Bloomberg
More Americans than Chinese come to Paris, of course, but they spend less. An American’s shopping expenditures run to 40 percent of a Chinese visitor’s. Only the Russian tourist spends more than the Chinese one, and only slightly.
The Chinese come, for the most part, to the large department stores, the grands magasins like Galeries Lafayette and Au Printemps, which sit side by side on the Boulevard Haussmann, each with its own glorious, stained-glass domes, two churches of capitalism.
Pang Hao and his wife, Wang Wenting, both 34, came from Nanjing on a tour with their young daughter, on a bus with 30 others. They had already been to Italy, Germany and Austria; Paris was their last stop. “We do all the shopping here,” Wang said, waiting in line at the Chanel boutique at Galeries Lafayette. “We’re going to spend a lot here.”
Photo: Bloomberg
Pang said that he preferred the “outlet stores” in the US, “where everything is cheaper.” But “Galeries Lafayette is very famous in China,” Wang said.
The Chinese market has become very important to both stores. Both advertise heavily in China, both work assiduously with tour operators and travel agents there and both have good relations with the Chinese Embassy and business organizations to get the VIP shopper as well. They have staff members who speak Chinese, store maps in Chinese and help for patrons to complete a detaxe form, which refunds most of the value-added tax. They take Chinese credit cards — the CUP card (China UnionPay) — and provide immediate cash refunds on the tax, so customers can spend more on easily transportable items, like perfumes and watches.
Printemps has a special entrance for Chinese groups, and it provides a short Chinese-language briefing about the store, said Laurent Schenten, the director of the international customer department. There are Chinese-speaking personal shoppers and Chinese public-address announcements. The store offers a digital card, so that a customer — with only a set amount of time to spend before the bus leaves — does not have to wait at each boutique for purchases, which are collected for them for a single payment.
International customers now represent some 40 percent of Printemps sales, and about one-third of that business is Chinese, Schenten said. Chinese customers spend an average of US$1,660 each at Printemps. “We work to get them to spend here and not on Avenue Montaigne or Galeries Lafayette,” he said.
Galeries Lafayette, which gets some 10 million foreign visitors a year, has been cultivating the Asian market for decades, said Thierry Vannier, its director of international promotion, “to ensure we have the right people, the right services and the right merchandise,” while working with travel agents and tourism groups in China “to push our store as the main store to be seen.”
“We’re more visited than the Eiffel Tower,” Vannier said proudly. Galeries Lafayette is planning to open a store next year in Beijing, where the name is a brand.
On a tour from Hong Kong, John Wu and his wife, Christine Au, were waiting to buy a Louis Vuitton wallet “for Auntie.”
“The newest arrivals are here,” he said. “The hottest things.”
Asked what struck them on their first trip to Paris, he said, “I was surprised by all the Chinese people here!”
A couple of young government employees from Shanghai, on their honeymoon, waited in a line to enter the Louis Vuitton boutique. Paris is a kind of dream, they said; they were going to buy “something for friends and colleagues.”
And the boss? They laughed.
“And maybe something for ourselves,” said the woman, who gave her name only as Xiao.
Chinese tourism in France is rising by more than 15 percent a year; according to Atout France; last year about 550,000 Chinese visited. The average Chinese tourist is male, about 45, lives in a large city and visits the most obvious places — the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and, of course, the shops. They spend about US$1,800 each on shopping, 60 percent of their travel budget, according to Global Blue, an international company that handles refunds of taxes for international shoppers.
In general, Chinese tour groups stay in large, cheaper hotels outside Paris and eat pre-planned meals in Chinese restaurants. But they buy luxury brands for themselves and their friends — especially items that have logos and that they know are not fakes. In China, such goods can cost 20 to 30 percent more.
“France is distant but we know her well,” said Nong Kang, who works for Atout France in China. “Our greatest writers spent years in France, and everyone here has read a book of Balzac or seen a movie starring French actor Alain Delon.”
Kang cited a well-known Chinese author, Lin Yutang (林語堂), who wrote that France and China understood each other because they shared the same precision about language and gastronomy. The Chinese say that they also feel political affinity, conscious of France’s revolutionary past, and that The Internationale — the anthem of revolutionary zeal — is French.
For Paul Roll, the director of the Paris Tourism Office, the Chinese visitor is “a peculiar kind of customer.”
“Chinese tourists do a European tour, as the Japanese did 25 years ago, with very modest local integration,” he said.
Over time, he said, that is likely to change.
“We want to attract those who came here once and wish to come back and travel in a more subtle way,” he said.
Jackie Ho came to Galeries Lafayette from Hong Kong with his family, including his daughter Yuki, 14.
“The prices are expensive, but the brands are better here,” he said.
“And we’re sure of the products here,” Yuki said.
Ho laughed. “A lot of products in Hong Kong are copied,” he said. “The Taiwanese are good at making fake things.”
Only the Taiwanese? He laughed again, a bit embarrassed. “What’s good is to buy a brand here you cannot buy in Hong Kong,” he said.
Was Paris what they imagined?
“Well, the city is not as clean as we thought,” he said.
But they plan to buy souvenirs and a watch — “and cosmetics,” Yuki said, giving her father one of those disgusted adolescent looks.
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