“The Gironde is big, very big” : as mass evacuations and cancellations of bookings due to the fires unfold, tourism professionals hope to salvage the rest of the season in this vast department, where the forest does not burn everywhere.
“I urge tourists not to come, not to join the Gironde”, said on Sunday the department’s prefect Sophie Brocas, also inviting “the tourists present to consider another destination”.
Major losses for tourism
About 220,000 people, including holidaymakers, have already been evacuated in recent days from several Gironde towns, especially popular seaside resorts at this time of year such as Lège-Cac-Ferret. “It’s a crushing blow to a large part of the department that is mainly touristic; tourism is completely halted, it’s the end of the season”, says Patrick Seguin, president of the Gironde Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI).
Nevertheless, “The Gironde is big, very big”, reminds AFP the president of the Union of Trades and Industries of the Hotel Industry (UMIH) Gironde, Franck Chaumès. “This comes from a good intention”, the prefect made this announcement “to give road routes easily accessible to firefighters and authorities” but “we hope it will be rectified” to “try to save the month of August”, he adds.
Claire Bigat, who lives in Lille and had planned two weeks of vacation in Andernos, between Biscarrosse and Lège-Cap-Ferret, “given the circumstances”, “does not want to go”. “Access seems uncertain, we have seen the authorities’ instructions and we do not want to clog the roads. Besides, our son is asthmatic, we cannot be in the smoke, and if it is to spend a vacation of desolation because everything has burned, it’s not worth it”, she tells AFP.
At Bordeaux train station, Francine Chauvirey, 76, who was spending holidays at her son’s, anticipated her return to Paris. “I had trouble breathing because of the smoke, so we changed my train ticket”, she confides to the AFP, her face protected by an FFP2 mask. Vila, a 32-year-old painter, likewise shortened his trip to Bordeaux to return home to Finland, “because of the fires”.
Tourism accounts for 7% of the department’s GDP, more than 40,000 jobs and 3.2 billion euros in direct spillovers, according to the department’s site.
“On the Cap Ferret peninsula, there are 100% losses since everyone has been evacuated”, according to Franck Chaumès. This concerns “around a hundred establishments: hotels, bars, restaurants, nightclubs” and “two campsites out of ten have burned”.
In the 22 other evacuated municipalities, commerce “is at a standstill” as well. “And there are also the Landes“, he adds. Nearly 40,000 holidaymakers, staying in 45 campsites in Gironde and Landes, have been evacuated so far, said Sunday to AFP Nicolas Dayot, president of the National Federation of Outdoor Hospitality (FNHPA).
Cancellations far beyond the areas affected by the fires
The evacuated zones are not the only ones seeing departures. “We have cancellations at the other end of Gironde: in Médoc, Libournais which is 70 km from Cap Ferret… It’s a catastrophe”, laments Franck Chaumès of UMIH Gironde.
A view shared by the co-chair of the Saint-Émilion tourism office, Jean-Daniel Debart, who says, “of course we must clear the roads but we must adopt more nuanced statements because not all of Gironde is affected”. “In Saint-Émilion, we are more than 80 km from the fires, this is not the Arcachon Basin”, he tells AFP. He laments that there are already “dozens of cancellations” including for August and beyond, with, for example, an “cancellation of a group that was due to come in September”, and dozens of refund requests.
One can “do oenotourism in the vineyards”, acknowledges Patrick Seguin of the CCI, “but given what French and foreign tourists see in the media, it does not tempt them to come”.
