Air travel to the south of France plummeted by as much as 57% in the wake of the Bastille Day terrorist massacre in Nice, new industry figures show.
The drop was caused by an immediate rush in booking cancellations plus a decline in new bookings to Nice, which has persisted.
Travel to Nice was already down due to previous terrorist attacks in France and plunged even further following the July 14 outrage.
International visitor arrivals in Nice dropped by 9.4% in the week after the attack, when compared with the same time last year. Across the country, post-attack arrivals were down 8.8%.
The collapse in flight bookings is revealed by industry booking analysis firm ForwardKeys, which monitors future travel patterns by analysing 14 million flight reservation transactions each day.
Future air bookings for the summer season, up to the end of September, have also been hit, with France down 20% overall and Nice down 19% specifically.
Flight bookings to Nice for the coming two months were already down 14% year-on-year before July 14 and fell a further 5% in the days following the terrorist attack.
The negative impact of the ongoing terrorist activity in the country was highlighted this week by Air France-KLM, which raised special concern about France as a destination.
ForwardKeys co-founder and chief executive, Olivier Jager, said: “Ever since the Charlie Hebdo attack last January, France has been suffering from a reduction in tourism confidence and just as bookings started to recover, another attack has taken place.
“Prior to the Bastille Day truck tragedy, Nice had been less affected than Paris but news of this incident has further damaged travel to both Nice and France as a whole.”
The figures do not take into account the impact of the terrorist killed of a priest at a church in a Normandy suburb on Tuesday.