Summer travel is on the horizon, but going away on holiday is out of reach for 40 percent of people in France who can’t afford to take a trip away from home, according to a June study from French association l’Observatoire des inégalités.
The study, which used data collected in January 2024, found that there was a correlation between people’s financial capacity for travel and their professional status, with 78 percent of senior executives able to take trips versus 47 percent of labourers.
“The higher you climb the social ladder, the more likely that you will be able to get away on holiday,” the study authors wrote.
The privileged network that comes with higher social status also plays a role.
“At the higher levels of the social ladder, people more often have access to free accommodation at holiday sites, such as second homes,” the authors added.
Critics say the inequality that exists in France is not a given.
“In northern countries such as Denmark, 80 percent of people go away on holiday. France could set that as an objective,” sociologist and author of "Quand le Tourisme s'éveillera" (When Tourism Wakes Up), Jean Viard told radio channel France inter.
Viard’s views were echoed in the l’Observatoire des inégalités study, which found that financial aid to help people take holiday trips was insufficient.
Experts say measures to enable more people to engage in holiday travel could reap benefits and boost equality, as it provides a rare opportunity for different social strata of the population to mix.
On holiday, “at the beach, at festivals and cultural sites, and through different activities, people keep to themselves less. Different social groups rub shoulders more than usual,” said Sandra Hoibian, director of Crédoc, a French centre for research into social and economic trends.
Supporting more people to take holidays and providing accessible pastimes would help “move the boundaries of social inequality”, she added.
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‘Feeling left out’
Among those most likely to stay home rather than travel are single women, “because travelling alone as a woman is not easy in our society," Viard said.
One of the primary reasons for this is security concerns, according to a 2020 Tourlane and Ifop survey which found that 78 percent of women in France had never gone on a solo trip.
Single parents are also less likely to travel on holiday “for practical and financial reasons”, Hoibian said – even if they want to.
“Families that cannot take their children on holiday feel left out,” she added.
Financial strain also prevents many people on lower salaries from travelling when they have time off.
“For people on the lowest incomes, the budget they would need to go away on holiday is much higher than their health budget, for example,” said Hoibian. “Going away on holiday is a major adjustment variable. If you are in financial difficulty, you could reduce healthcare or food costs a little, but most of all, you cut out vacations.”
The other demographic least likely to take vacation trips are young people from working-class neighbourhoods.
“And yet, travel is a huge means of integration,” Viard said. “Whereas if you spend all summer hanging around where you live, that’s not going to help you integrate into society.”
‘Unmatched’ poverty levels
Most French holiday-makers opt for a summer vacation.
“In summer, 50 percent of people in France go away on holiday, with 12 percent going at another time of year,” Viard said.
But the number of trips that individuals take in a year is also revealing.
“Going on holiday once a year is not the same thing as going on six short breaks, because you are able to take regular weekend trips away from home,” Hoibian said.
Lower-income workers are more likely to take a single trip, she added, to avoid paying multiple sets of travel costs.
Figures from France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) show that workers who are middle managers and higher – “cadres” as they are referred to in French – take holidays away from home for an average of 26 nights per year, versus 11 for labourers.
“There is still a long way to go to democratise holiday taking, despite considerable progress since World War II,” Viard added.
In the past 40 years, the rate of holiday travel has stuck at around 60 percent as living standards have stagnated for France’s lowest earners.
Change does not appear to be on the horizon, according to poverty figures from Insee that show current levels have been “unmatched for nearly 30 years”.
Between 2022 and 2023, poverty rates increased "strongly", rising from 14.4 percent to 15.4 percent, the institute said in its annual study published on July 7.
This is the highest poverty rate in France since INSEE launched its indicator in 1996.
In the space of a year, 650,000 people entered into poverty in France, bringing the total number of people living in monetary poverty – meaning their monthly income is less that the poverty line of €1,288 for a single person – to 9.8 million in 2023.
The figures are "alarming" but "far from surprising” housing charity la Fondation pour le logement des défavorisés told AFP, as it called for the government to take action to create structural change.
This article has been adapted from the original in French by Joanna York.
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