The French seaside town of Nice was dealt a terrible blow late Thursday evening, when a truck driven by a 31-year-old French-Tunisian man named François Molins barreled headlong into a crowd of Bastille Day revelers. The attack left 84 people dead and 202 injured. Currently, 50 people are in critical condition. In the aftermath of the attack, perhaps not surprisingly, the travel industry has seen a noticeable economic downturn.
While the entirety of the European stock market was down following the brutal attack, it was travel stocks and airlines that saw their stocks sold at an alarming rate on Friday.
The French people are still reeling from yet another attack on their soil, but industry experts claim that the downturn — even in the Travel sector — won’t be permanent. As analysts at Daiwa Capital Markets explained, “Indeed, with the French economy having proved to be relatively resilient to the previous Bataclan incident, the economic consequences need not be marked, although demand in the French services sector, not least the tourism sector — the world’s biggest — might be adversely affected over the near term.”
Of course the harm would be short term; after all, how long can you keep people from visiting one of the most beautiful countries in the world?
