France begins to receive tourists vaccinated against covid-19

Paris – After “a very bad year”, the tour operator Marc Vernhet from Paris sees a ray of light with the promised return of tourists from the United States and other countries who are welcome in France as of Wednesday if they have been vaccinated against covid- 19.

Your agency, 2CVParisTour.com, is starting to get reservations again from Americans for its sightseeing tours, made in quirky Citroën cars. In June there are still very few, but things are looking better for July, said Vernhet at a time when France is taking the first steps to rebuild its position of preferential destination for foreign tourism.

Before the pandemic, Vernhet made three or four tours of the capital a day. The job was finished when France went into lockdown, and it is now running only about three tours a week, almost exclusively for French tourists. Vernhet considered that the reopening of the country’s borders to vaccinated tourists is “excellent news”, but said that it will still take a few weeks for the business to regain some air of normality, noting that “I am not expecting to work at the level at the that I usually do before mid-July ”.

“We have been waiting for this for months and months,” he noted.

In order to enter France, Americans and other visitors from most countries outside of Europe will need to show that they have been fully inoculated against COVID-19 with vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency.

France only accepts inoculations from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson (Janssen), which means that tourism will not immediately be returning from the lucrative markets of China and Russia, which use vaccines not approved by the regulatory agency of the medicines.

Read here: Spain allows the entry of tourists with a vaccination card against covid-19

Without one of these four vaccinations, most visitors from other EU countries will have to prove that they have a compelling reason to visit France and will be quarantined after arrival.

In addition to reopening their doors to tourists, the French government also authorized restaurants and cafes on Wednesday to once again receive indoor diners, and to attend gyms. The country has registered 110,000 deaths related to covid-19.