Europe pines for big-spending US tourists

Down at Westminster Pier, where the river cruisers come and go in the unusually hot August sunshine, a chatter of languages floats ashore on a merciful breeze. French, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Spanish. Tourism, it seems, is alive once more.

But one tongue is barely heard. That instantly recognizable American accent, usually so audible in tourist spots around European capitals, is all but silent. It's not that the US contingent is unusually quiet. It's that it is barely present.

"My son was just saying how few Americans there seem to be," says a rare visitor from across the Atlantic, Jodell Scott, as she and her family ponder their next move after a Thames cruise.

"The war situation has made a lot of Americans afraid to travel," she adds. "We talked about it and thought, 'We can't be afraid.' We'd planned this trip a long time."

After two dismal years for tourism in Europe, visitors are starting to come out of their shells again. A succession of events unsympathetic to tourism - Sept. 11, the global economic downturn, the Iraq war, and the SARS virus - put millions off travel until very recently.

That trend is starting to turn around now, however, with some European countries like Britain and Spain reporting growth in visitor numbers. The World Tourism Organization reported in June that the tide could be about to turn. "Prospects for Europe show a notable improvement," it said.

But no one has yet managed to lure back the high-rollers of the tourism industry - the Americans. Some have stayed away due to war and terrorism concerns; others have adopted an "America first" patriotic approach to vacationing; still others are deterred by the weak dollar, which makes foreign holidays more expensive.

In Britain - the most popular destination for American tourists to Europe - figures for the first half of 2003 show an 11 percent decline in US visitors. In Italy, it's more than 20 percent, while in France, it's even worse: an estimated 26 percent drop this year.

"Until Sept. 11, about 45 percent of our clients were Americans," laments Mauricio Mistarz, head receptionist at a small three-star hotel on the Left Bank in Paris. "Now, on a good day, Americans fill 20 percent of our rooms."

The protracted slump in US visitors to Europe is alarming for the millions of Europeans who profit from their dollars - from the travel agent to the taxi driver, the postcard vendor to the tour guide.

American visitors tend to stay longer and spend more than any other tourists. In France last year, the Americans spent more than British and Irish visitors combined, despite being outnumbered 5 to 1. In Britain, the average American spends $1,000 a trip, far outstripping European visitors.

All of this means that US reluctance to travel costs European tourism dear.

The French hotel group Accor reported a 7.8 percent slump in first-half revenues; Italy's tourist authority reported multimillion losses for hotels in the first half of this year.

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