Central Corfu Municipality at IFTM Top Resa Paris tourist exhibition
CORFU.Top Resa Paris is one of the most important tourist exhibitions, not only because the French market generates large volumes of outbound tourism, but also due to its great influence.
(Central Corfu Municipality) The Municipality of Central Corfu and Diapontia Islands, represented by the Deputy Mayor of Tourism, Sustainable Tourism Development and Public Relations, Spyros Halkiopoulos, participated in the largest tourism exhibition of France, IFTM Top Resa Paris.
Top Resa Paris is one of the most important tourist exhibitions, not only because the French market generates large volumes of outbound tourism, but also due to its great influence.
Specifically for Corfu, France respresents a market with a long history, as our tourism relations go back to the 1950s. Let's not forget the role that France played in the creation of organised tourism and the emergence of alternative tourism.
The Club Méditerranée, which opened in 1953 in Dassia, was the first international tourist facility in the area, shaping trends in Greek tourism from then on.
Nowadays, France is the fifth-largest market for our country, with approximately 91,000 visitors last year, while this year shows an increasing trend, as according to airport data, around 61,000 arrivals from France were recorded by July.
However, the French market’s fifth-place ranking has great potential for growth. It is considered necessary to strengthen and further develop collaborations with a market with which we have strong ties and that simultaneously shows significant performance indicators.
Apart from the Mediterranean attractions, our goal is to highlight Corfu’s comparative advantages: its nature, culture, and people.
Starting from our shared history, from the Napoleonic era, we arrive at today and the great potential for promoting nature tourism, that the environmental wealth of Corfu offers, providing unforgettable experiences to French visitors.
With the upcoming Corfu Easter in mind, we are focussing on our music and visual arts, as well as gastronomy, with a particularly noteworthy coincidence being that Orthodox and Catholic Easter will fall on the same date in 2025.
During the exhibition, meetings and collaborations were held with tourism entities and stakeholders. A meeting was held with the Secretary General of the Hellenic Tourism Organization (EOT), Andreas Fiorentino, while the collaboration with the head of the EOT office in France, Emy Anagnostopoulou, was of particular importance for expanding our market share in the French market. This collaboration resulted in the initial framework for joint promotional activities.
Photo: Municipality of Central Corfu and Diapontia Islands
