Paris: France is facing a growing debate over the rise of child-free resorts and adult-only hotels, with Socialist senator and former families minister Laurence Rossignol declaring that such venues are discriminatory, encourage intolerance, and should be banned.
Rossignol compared the exclusion of children from holidays to establishments refusing pets, insisting that children must not be treated as inconveniences. “We can’t organise society by separating children off from ourselves in the same way some establishments don’t take dogs. Children aren’t troublesome pets,” the Minister said.
The controversy intensified after Sarah El Haïry, France’s high commissioner for childhood, condemned adult-only holiday resorts as “not part of [French] culture, not our philosophy and not what we want to see as the norm in our country.”
Last month, El Haïry launched the Family Choice Award to counter the trend, urging parents to vote for child-friendly destinations and “put children back at the heart of public space. No way can we let it take hold in our society that children aren’t welcome on a restaurant terrace,” the High Commissioner added.
Rossignol, however, argued that symbolic initiatives were not enough and urged the government to open a parliamentary debate on making it illegal to exclude children from hotels, resorts, and restaurants. The Minister said that such practices amounted to “organising society around people’s intolerance of others” and warned they served to “institutionalise and legitimise intolerance.”
Adult-only hotels and resorts, often marketed with imagery of adults enjoying quiet, undisturbed leisure, have been expanding globally, particularly in Mexico, Central America, Thailand, and Greece, where they attract large numbers of northern European tourists, including Britons and Germans. South Korea has also seen a rise in child-free cafés and restaurants. Businesses report that demand has grown further since the Covid-19 pandemic.
France, however, has traditionally promoted itself as a family-friendly destination with holiday campsites, hotel waterslides, and kids’ clubs. The country has relatively few adult-only establishments, estimated to make up just 3–5 percent of the tourism sector, far below neighboring Spain, which has become a European leader in the child-free market.
Falling birthrate in France
The debate comes at a sensitive time, with France’s birthrate continuing to decline. President Emmanuel Macron has called for a ‘demographic rearmament’ through pro-child policies, while experts stress the importance of ensuring children maintain visibility in society. A 2023 expert report on reducing children’s screen time emphasized the need to give them more alternatives and reaffirm ‘their right to be noisy’ as part of their rightful place in social life.
Véronique Siegel, president of the hotel division at the UMIH trade union, downplayed the controversy, stressing that child-free resorts were ‘extremely rare’ compared with the total tourism sector. She argued that hotels were simply meeting customer demand and warned that if banned, clients might choose neighboring European countries instead.
Vincent Lagarde, Associate Professor of entrepreneurship and business at the University of Limoges, who studies the business model of child-free resorts, said that their appeal was often misunderstood. His research found that the main reason French holidaymakers chose them was not dislike of children, but ‘exhaustion.’
Many were parents themselves or teachers seeking a temporary break from their responsibilities. It wasn’t that they didn’t like children; they just needed a pause from the rhythm of the rest of the year,” Lagarde explained. Others chose them for couple-focused time, or because of the ‘perception of luxury’ linked to a quiet, adult-only environment. Resorts could charge higher prices for guaranteeing tranquility.
The associate professor also pointed out that while French anti-discrimination and trade laws could theoretically be open to interpretation, no family had ever filed a legal case against a child-free hotel. He predicted the sector would expand gradually, just as child-free weddings had grown in popularity.
ALSO READ | Blackpink thrills fans with epic Wembley Stadium show
