Paris hotel bookings inching back

PARIS, FRANCE: Parisian hotel occupancy rates, which plunged in the wake of the November 13 attacks in the French capital, are inching back toward normal levels, the city's tourist office said Wednesday.

"It seems there is an upward trend since the weekend," the tourism office said in a statement.

In noted that occupancy rates remained down by 16 percent on average on Sunday and Monday whereas the plunge had been 28 percent the first week after the attacks, which killed 130 people.

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The impact of the attacks blamed on Islamic State extremists "is stronger than those of last January," when extremists attacked the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the tourism office noted.

In the first week after the November 13 attacks hotel occupancy fell by a quarter on average, whereas the week beforehand had seen a rise of 2.4 percent, official figures show.

Cancellations were dropping off compared with the days immediately following the attacks -- although they remained 21 percent higher than usual, the tourist office noted.

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It added that reservations for tourists flying in for the year-end holiday had "stabilised" but remained "slightly down on 2014."

Year-end bookings were running two percent lower than normal ahead of the attacks and fell back a further 11 percent thereafter but that slide "is relatively limited in the circumstances," said the tourism office, whose data do not include last-minute bookings.

Tourism accounts for some seven percent of gross domestic product for France, which ranks as the top global tourist destination.