France's tourism industry is suffering due to bad weather, with heavy rains in June affecting areas popular with travellers, news agency Reuters has reported.
After exceptionally warm months in March and April, May has been damp and June soaked by the rain in what has been an unlucky summer so far for French tourism.
In western France, popular with UK holidaymakers, the rains have been especially heavy, with 6.3 inches of rain falling in the Brittany town of Brest in June, beating a previous record from ten years ago.
The trend of wet weather has so far continued into July, but meteorologists predict warmer climates to come for the July 14 holiday weekend.
"If the situation does not improve, the season could be really bad," Maria Deurre, secretary of the camping and caravanning union of the Perigord region in south-western France told the Sud Ouest daily.
France is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, attracting 76 million visitors a year, of which more than 90 per cent come from Europe and the United States.
The weather could also affect one of France's most popular exports, wine – according to Jean-Claude Avenard, a wine official at the chamber of agriculture in Bordeaux, the crop this year was unlikely to be as good as the two previous ones.
But the harvest could still be saved if the weather improved for the rest of the summer, he added.
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