Despite the return of tourists after two years of the coronavirus pandemic, the Eiffel Tower – the most famous French monument – is set to experience “another difficult year” in 2022.
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According to the statements of an anonymous engineer to the investigative newspaper ‘Marianne’, he says that he has recently published several confidential reports, between the years 2010 and 2016, which show that “the monument is in a very degraded state and that the successive repair works are merely superficial”.
At this same point he points out that the Eiffel Tower is rusting and the maintenance work – underway, ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games – would be just make-up, “It’s that simple, if Gustave Eiffel visited the place, he would have a fit said the engineer.
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Return of tourists to France
The Parisian monument attracts about 20,000 people a day, just like in the old days. “School holidays and sunny weekends confirmed its appeal in the nearby French and European market,” explained to AFP the president of its exploitation company (Sete), Jean François Martins.
The strong return of the Europeans (60%), the presence of the Americans (17%) and the French (15%) are the strong trends after two closures, of a cumulative duration of one year, due to covid-19.
This partially compensates for the slow restart of the work of tour operators and the absence of “distant markets”, in particular the Asian ones.
The Eiffel Tower, which has received 1.6 million visitors since the beginning of the year, plans 5.5 million admissions by 2022, “10% less than in 2019”, last reference year.
“This may sound very positive, but the missing 10% is our margin,” Martins sums up.
(The Eiffel Tower) will have a difficult year.
And if the deficit for 2021 was lower than expected thanks to “a good end of the year” -43 million instead of 70, after 52 million in 2020-, Sete “will have a difficult year” financially in 2022.
“This new deficit situation will most likely require a new recapitalization” by the shareholders of the company, indicates its president, who is still waiting for specific help from the State.
Meanwhile, the monument is still struggling with its 20th painting campaign, which aims to return it to its original “yellow-brown” color, with a view to the 2024 Olympics.
Started in 2019, the operation is complicated and slowed down by the discovery of traces of lead in the previous layers.
Another sensitive issue for the Eiffel Tower is criminal acts on the sitemore numerous with the return of tourists.
In addition, the planned felling of some twenty trees that are at its feet to allow the construction of a luggage room and premises for employees, aroused such controversy at the end of April that the Paris city council abandoned the project in a few days. .
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