Atout France

The first website promoting travel to France

In 1997, due to the overwhelming request from our web readers, France.com focused on providing information on travel to France.

Our first endeavor in this space was called Francescape, and we did it in cooperation with the French Government Tourist Office. This government agency, then called “Maison de la France”, became Atout France in 2009.

Our 1997 website was rudimentary, for sure, but it was the very first example of online promotion of travel to France.

French Affairs

Since 2002, Atout France has organized yearly events in the United States. The 2-day events, called French Affairs, take place in different American cities and serve to facilitate commerce between French travel suppliers and American travel sellers (such as France.com).

France.com being one of the most established France travel websites, has been invited yearly since 2009, to participate and meet with many French suppliers of travel services. The invitations always included hotel stay, 2 days of conference, meetings, lunches and dinners as well as gala presentations.

The highlight of the reunion were the awards given to the American companies that did most to promote travel to France and sell French travel services.

In the following copies of the official catalogues for each even you can see that France.com is clearly shown and its domain name and website are always promoted.

2009:

2010

2011

2012

2014

Atout France’s most important event is the yearly trade show called “Rendez-Vous en France”. These trade shows attract yearly more than 3,000 travel professionals and are held in rotating French cities.

Foreign Tour operators who promote and sell France can be invited to participate by Atout France which covers the cost of Airfare, hotel accommodation during the duration of the trade show and all meals.

In 2009, France.com was invited to participate at the Rendez-Vous en France trade shows. As a member of the US delegation of Tour Operators, France.com was always promoted in the official catalogs given to the travel professional attending the show.

Here, you can see the entry for France.com in the official catalogs,

In 2009:

In 2010

in 2011

in 2012

in 2013

Participation in the Trade show costs $300.00 USD and Atout France gladly received France.com payments, including one just a couple of weeks before it launched a lawsuit against France.com, claiming that we were not authorized to promote France!

In 2015, the US delegation of Tour Operators was invited to meet with Laurent Fabius, France’s minister of Foreign Affairs, who wanted to thank us for the work we were doing in promoting France’s travel offer. This was less than 2 weeks before he launched the lawsuit claimed that France.com has no right to promote France under the name France.com.