Paris
According to Union, the operating company is “heading for a catastrophe” because its budget is based on unrealistic future visitor numbers
Wed, Dec 27, 2023, 4:30 p.m. GMT
The Eiffel Tower was closed to the public on Wednesday after staff went on strike to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of its creator Gustave Eiffel.
Disappointed tourists who had booked tickets to the 134-year-old monument were told the monument was closed and they would be contacted by email.
The powerful CGT union said the industrial action ahead of contract negotiations with the town hall, which owns the tower, was a protest against “the current way it is managed”.
Union leaders claim that operating company SETE is “heading for disaster” because its business model is “overambitious and unsustainable” and is based on an overly optimistic estimate of future ticket sales revenue and an underestimation of rising maintenance and repair costs.
The Eiffel Tower, one of the world's most visited attractions, attracted nearly 7 million visitors each year before the Covid pandemic – three-quarters of them foreign tourists. After mandatory closures and travel restrictions were lifted, the number rose to 5.9 million visitors in 2022.
The CGT says SETE is basing its estimate of its future budget on it attracting 7.4 million visitors each year, a figure that has never been achieved before and which the union sees as unrealistic.
On Wednesday, the esplanade at the foot of the tower was still open to the public. A DJ-led light and sound show with artistic music and dance performances, scheduled to be broadcast from the first floor of the tower as well as on social media and television on Wednesday evening to mark the 100th anniversary of Eiffel's death, was pre-recorded and was from the strike had not been affected, said SETE.
Gustave Eiffel was 91 years old when he died on December 27, 1923. A visionary entrepreneur and brilliant civil engineer, he had just completed the construction of an iron and steel skeleton for the Statue of Liberty in New York with Eugène Viollet-le-Duc from the tower of Notre Dame Cathedral. He gained notoriety when he was asked to work for the 1889 World's Fair to create a symbol of French industrial savoir-faire.
The 10,100-ton iron tower he designed was originally intended as a temporary structure, to be demolished and scrapped in 1909. Some, including writers Guy de Maupassant and Alexandre Dumas the Younger, couldn't wait to see him. He described it as “useless and monstrous” and an affront to “French taste” even before the foundation stone was laid.
The city authorities decided to spare the so-called Dame de Fer (Iron Lady) after they realized that the tower, then the tallest building in the world, could be used as a radio telegraph and weather station. Since then, it has become the French capital's most famous landmark, rising 312 meters (1,023 feet) above the city.
The top floor of the tower is scheduled to close next month for an annual renovation lasting several weeks.
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