Paul Roll, Managing Director of the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau

Does Paris have an image problem?

Paul Roll - No. If someone were to ask me today "what is the biggest problem facing Paris as a destination", I would reply that it's probably its accommodation capacity. On the other hand, Paris does not have an image problem. A number of surveys, most recently by Anholt-GfK Roper, have shown us to be the most desirable city in the world. In terms of image, I'd even go so far as to say that we're in one of the most beautiful eras we've ever lived through.

What are the reasons for this?

P. R. - It's a combination of factors. The city is beautiful, of course, but above all it has been able to ask itself questions about its modernity, in terms of infrastructure, public transport and even 'greening'. Any event of this kind - as we saw with the launch of Velib' or Paris Plage - is strong enough to be equivalent to an advertising campaign that no budget could pay for. Today, it's the life of the city that makes up the image, and a large part of our communication is not purely touristy. There's a real curiosity about what's going on in the city. Just look at the coverage in the foreign press of the launch of Autolib or Vogueo, for example. City marketing has changed, and the role of an organisation like ours is to set this change to music, to integrate information and bring operators together.

By what means?

P. R. - This involves some simple things: I communicate about what's going to happen, I promote the hotel trade, I help the press discover Paris by focusing more on selected themes than on the "monumental", and so on. Over the last two years, we've developed the shopping theme enormously, as it's the second most popular reason for visiting Paris after the monuments, but ahead of gastronomy. And in 2010, there will be five key themes for us: the opening of new palaces, the clarification of the hotel offer with the arrival of the fifth star, the reduction in VAT on restaurants, the opening up of tourist zones to all businesses and the development of the cultural offer. On all these issues, our job is to communicate upstream with operators so that everyone is on the same page. We don't invent events, we bring together what already exists.