The attacks will definitely have an impact on our tour operators,” Nelson Lee Chean Chai, honorary secretary of the Malaysian Chinese Tourism Association, which has 600 members 40 percent of whom operate tours to Europe, told The Sun Daily, “but I believe that given [the French government’s] long experience in this line, they can deal with the situation well.”
The biggest concern is the closing of France’s borders, sparking long delays as passports are checked and luggage search. That is also having an impact on commerce for companies that operate in more than one European country. Following the attacks in Paris, several countries moved to tighten border controls to stem the flow of immigrants from Syria and Iraq.
In the wake of the attacks, Paris closed all of its parks and tourist sites. The U.K. and U.S. governments issued travel warnings to Paris. U2, the Foo Fighters and Prince canceled concerts. Les Galleries Lafayette, one of the largest department stores in Paris, had a bomb scare on the day after the attacks prompting an evacuation. The public sites have all since reopened, but the tourists haven’t rushed back.
On Sunday the Place de la Republique saw a near stampede after some firecrackers were set off. The rush of hundreds, if not thousands of panicked mourners who had been paying respects at one of the six memorial sites closed traffic and locked down the sector briefly. On Wednesday, the police briefly shut down the Gare du Nord train station to do a controlled explosion of suspicious packages. “It was scary,” says one American banker in town for the day from London, where he moved after surviving 9/11 at the World Trade Center. “It brings back bad memories.” Earlier that same day, much of northern Paris was shut down as the French police raided a Saint-Denis apartment building, killing three people including suspected mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
French authorities hope that was a turning point and that visitors will believe Paris safe again, even though at least two suspects involved in the attacks remain at large. “It’s too early to know the full impact of the attacks,” says Véronique Potelet, a spokeswoman for Paris’s Tourism Bureau. “We hope that the Saint-Denis raid reassures people that every measure has been taken to secure Paris.”
But in Le Marais, the popular Jewish Quarter and shopping area, almost half the stores remained shuttered on Thursday and security checked shoppers’ bags of most stores. Most hotels in Paris had security searching luggage. “We can’t live like this,” says a woman who only identified herself only as Sophie, a sales clerk at the Kookai, Naf Naf outlets in the 2nd arondissement. “We are a free society. We can’t live under lock and key forever