The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development, along with Campus France, has developed a mobile app that aims to promote France as both a tourist and a language destination.
Immersion France, which was launched at the end of last month, allows users to browse a variety of courses according to type and location in both English and French.
“The app is designed to highlight France as a destination for tourism and promote French language”
“The app is designed to highlight France as a destination for tourism and promote French language,” Stéphane Felut-Paris, IT director at Campus France, said to The PIE News.
“It is enabling users to look at once at all regions and find all the attractive destinations of France, coupled with many different levels of French speaking courses.”
On the platform, users are able to view and choose from hundreds of language stays, according to their language ability, preferred length of stay and which region they want to be in.
“Combining language learning opportunities and tourist discovery in one application is the best way to develop the sector,” Campus France said.
Users can also select which region they would like to see courses in.
A week into its launch, Immersion France had reached 2,200 downloads which included 56,000 page openings.
The countries which have so far seen the most downloads are France, China, the US and Russia.
While the app does not facilitate course bookings, the platform “is enabling people using the app to get directly in contact with the institutions providing the offer,” said Felut-Paris.
A contact form is available on the institutions’ pages on the app, which is now available on iOS, and soon to be available on Android.
There are 130,000 students who come to France each year to study French, and as a result, language tourism in the country generates €115m a year.
“We expect the app to work well on countries that have already an interest in coupling tourism and courses of French,” added Anne Benoit, communications director at Campus France. “Such as Japan, the US, and China.”
