Searching online for France's official tourism site feels a bit like asking for ketchup at a cordon bleu restaurant.  Google, like the stereotypical French waiter, just kinda sneers at you and begins to mumble incomprehensibly.

The dot-travel initiative was supposed to clear up all this confusion by only assigning the ".travel" extension to official tourism marketing organizations.  And typing in france.travel will lead you to something that looks official, but it appears to be a site for government bureaucrats and is only in France's official language (French, I believe).  There are no obvious links to anything of use to a tourist.

Typing the keywords "france" and  "travel" into google will lead you to something called the "French Tourist Office for France Tourism."  It looks like this:



Surely that can't be the "official" site for one of the world's favourite tourism destinations.

It's not that there isn't plenty of information on the web relating to travel in France, it's just that sometimes people like the reassurance of something government-sponsored and official to use as a starting point and a "credibility" filter.  Fellow travelers can provide valuable unbiased opinions on tripadvisor and other sites, but the information tends to be fragmented, leaving the role of providing context and a digestible overview of options to the tourism boards.

At this point, France appears to be taking a pass on the whole Internet phenomenon.  Perhaps I should try to get my old Minitel system fired up again...





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