The Eiffel Tower which is one of the world’s prime tourist attractions, was closed Wednesday after staff went on strike, the tower’s operator revealed on Thursday morning.
The strike on the 100th anniversary of the death of engineer Gustave Eiffel, who built the tower, was to protest about ‘the current way it is managed’, the hard-left CGT union said in a statement.
The tower’s operator SETE was ‘headed for disaster’, it said.
The CGT said management was running the Eiffel Tower according to a business model that was “too ambitious and unsustainable” and that it said was based on an inflated estimate of future visitor numbers while under-estimating construction costs.
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SETE apologised to visitors, advising anyone with electronic tickets for Wednesday “to check their email” for more information on their booking.
The Eiffel Tower — Paris’s most famous landmark — attracts nearly seven million visitors a year, around three-quarters of them foreigners, according to its website.
During the Covid pandemic numbers dropped sharply due to closures and travel restrictions, but recovered to 5.9 million in 2022.
The CGT said the tower’s management was basing its future budget on 7.4 million annual visitors, although ‘this level has never been reached’.
Eiffel died on December 27, 1923, at the age of 91.
In another report, a man has lost his life, and two others have been injured in a disturbing knife and hammer attack on a street in central Paris, France.
The attack transpired on Quai de Grenelle, near the Eiffel Tower, just before 21:00 local time (20:00 GMT) on Saturday.
Anti-terrorism prosecutors have launched an investigation after a 26-year-old French national, known to security services, was arrested.
Authorities have stated that the individual killed in the incident was a German national.
The victim, born in 1999, was fatally stabbed while in the company of his wife, as stated by France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.
The Interior Minister stated that the wife’s life was saved by a taxi driver’s intervention, and the suspect fled across a nearby bridge over the River Seine.