Emily In Paris Tourism—Local Hostility As Season Four Begins Shooting

13.02.2024 - 16:37 / forbes.com

Season one streamed into 58 million households in 2020 during the pandemic and in 2022, Emily in Paris was the most watched show on Netflix. Its popularity turned locations around the French capital into tourist hotspots, with depictions of Paris that not everyone found favorable—as season four goes into production, not everyone wants to be in this version of Paris.

The series follows Emily Cooper, a young American who arrives from Chicago to work in a fictional marketing agency and lives in a beautiful square, Place de l’Estrapade, in the 5th arrondissement (suburb) of Paris. It is here that Le Parisien and U.K. newspapers in the U.K. ran photos of graffiti that recently appeared against the show, saying things like 'Emily Not Welcome' and 'South Paris Is Not Yours'.

In 2021, there was already a small backlash. Le Monde reported that local residents complained that there was no compensation for the fact that it had become impossible to park or to freely come and go in the square where they live or work.

The series has been a big boost for many businesses in the capital—La Boulangerie Moderne, a 19th-century bakery on Rue des Fossés Saint-Jacques is where Emily first tastes a pain au chocolat, and it reports that as many as 40% of its customers visit because of the series.

The Telegraph reports that this is quite often the case with many of the locations used in Emily in Paris. After Emily visits Carette in the show, a tea house that has been open since 1927, suddenly tourists began arriving to taste the same thing—a chocolat chaud with chantilly cream. Locals who used to frequent the Italian restaurant, Terra Nera, in the square where she lives and where her love interest works, complain that it is now too expensive and too busy.

Setjetting, the idea of visiting places that you see in your favorite television series is a continuing trend in travel and Netflix recently gave permission for one travel company to start running Emily in Paris holidays, where travelers visit places where the series is shot and participate in activities that Emily, the actress Lily Collins, does in the show—pastry making or drinking Lillet-Spritz cocktails.

The counter argument that has been raging for three years now about Emily in Paris is that firstly, it represents a clichéd view of France and French people and secondly, that it encourages a superficial kind of tourism, where travelers pass through places to take Instagrammable-worthy pictures and then leave, without ever really getting to know the place. Additionally, the character doesn't speak any French and lives an impossibly lavish lifestyle that would not be possible on her salary.

The debate comes as the French government is trying to redirect its tourists away