Chinese firm brings 6,400 workers on French holiday

This is the kind of junket that must have Fáilte Ireland chomping at the bit.

Earlier this month, Li Jinyuan, president of the Chinese Tiens conglomerate, brought 6,400 of his employees on holiday to France, staying in Paris and the Cote d'Azur, at a cost of more than €13 million.

The largest ever tour group to visit France, the Tiens tour group took over 140 hotels in Paris for the group (there are around 150 hotels in Dublin) which was celebrating the 20th birthday of the group.

The employees from the tourism, trade and cosmetics group were given a private tour of the Louvre, Galaries Lafayette opened specially for them, and the Moulins Rouge put on a special show for the blue-hatted group.

In Cannes and Monaco, the group booked 4,700 rooms and the Guinness World Records people monitored the world's longest "human-made phrase" as the inspectors watched the group line up on a beach to break the record with the somewhat unsyntactical "Tiens dream is Nice in the Cote d'Azur".

France is expected to welcome 100 million tourists this year, with most of the growth coming from China and Asia.

In 2009, Tibetans staged protests in several Chinese cities about an alleged “pyramid scheme”-style scam run by Tiens.