Spain and Tunisia are the two favourite foreign destinations for the French in summer 2025
- Eric ALAUZEN
- Mar 9
- 3 min read
L’Echo Touristique, the pioneering medium of the French travel industry, launched in 1934 under the title Le Jeu (casino news), has witnessed the changes, crises and challenges of the sector over the past ninety years. Considered one of the oldest publications in the press, ten years older than Le Monde, in 1936 it accompanied the birth of tourism in France, with the mythical law of paid holidays (two weeks at the time), offered by the Front Populaire.
A partner of Orchestra, the main supplier of indicators for the French tourism market for the last twenty years, it has become a benchmark in the publication of representative barometers of the tourism market.
We took a closer look at the Orchestra barometer of travel sales, published by L'Echo Touristique, by physical and online travel agencies in January 2025, to find out where the French will be going on holiday this summer.
Spain and Tunisia top the list for the French
First of all, it is reassuring to note that, taking all destinations together, travel sales by physical and online travel agencies are up, even if the figures for January 2025 were better: an increase of 6.1% if we compare them with January 2024, and +1.3% if we compare February 2024 with February 2025.
In the space of a month, the destinations on the podium have changed: mainland France has become number one (local tourism), followed by Spain and Tunisia (which was in fourth place in January, including France).
Tunisia on the podium
Although Tunisia was only in fourth place in January 2025, after mainland France, Spain and Greece, in February it recorded one of the strongest growth rates of all the destinations: +22.6% in business volume compared with 2024, a figure that augurs well for an excellent tourist season in 2025. The average shopping basket is also up 3.3% on February 2024.
In 2024, official Tunisian figures show that the country welcomed more than 10.25 million visitors, generating total revenue of the equivalent of €2.24 billion. A figure that reflected the success of Tunisia as a destination, up 8.29% on the 2023 season.
The Tunisian tourism sector accounts for around 9% of GDP and will generate almost 400,000 direct and indirect jobs in 2024. North Africans will be the most numerous visitors at around 5.7 million, mainly Algerians (3.5 million compared with 3 million in 2023), followed immediately by Europeans (3 million, up 17.3% compared with 2023), mainly represented by the French (1.1 million) and Germans (332,000).
Tunisia has a population of over 12 million.
By comparison, Morocco is only in 5th place, with a 6% drop in business volume compared to 2023, but an 11% increase in its average basket between 2023 and 2024. Greece comes in 4th place, also with a 7.5% drop in business volume.
As we often say here, a big well done to the tireless work of the Ministère du Tourisme tunisien and the Office National du Tourisme Tunisien, whose offices abroad are doing a remarkable job of promoting the destination and its riches.
Spain, France's favourite foreign destination
Spain, for its part, set a new record for tourist numbers in 2024, with almost 94 million foreign visitors (Source: Spanish Ministry of Industry and Tourism), 10% more than in 2023.
Revenues from tourism have risen to 126 billion euros, compared with 108 billion in 2023. By way of comparison, in 2024 France, the world's leading tourist destination, will have welcomed more than 100 million foreign visitors.
Spain's population will exceed 46 million by 2025.
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