To promote foot falls in France and help Indian tourists to visit France without any hiccups, French emabassy in India has announced few initiatives. At an event in New Delhi, French embassy announced very useful Chalo Paris mobile app for Android and iOS devices.
Chalo Paris app can be used on Android & Apple smartphones and tablets, and would be ideal for those who are planning a French holiday. This app contain very useful informations, which can be had anytime anywhere. This app provide useful inforamtion about :
- monuments and tourist spots in Paris
- restaurants in Paris with a particular focus on vegetarian restaurants and some recommendations by Ms Rashmi Uday Singh, who is an acclaimed food-critic
- shopping areas in popular districts and night-life spots
- connection details from Paris to popular places such as Normandy, the Loire Valley, Mont Saint-MFichel, Bordeaux and its vineyards
- to help Indian tourists to overcome language barrier, it has practical features for English-French/French-English translation to assist travellers in day-to-day situations
- All useful telephone numbers and Euro/Rupee convertor
The beauty of this app is that the majority of its features can be accessed in offline mode and you do not require internet connection all the time to access information from it. This app will be available from 10th December and you can download the same from Google Play and Apple Store.
On this occasion, France Ambassador to India also announced that Tourists and Business visas for Indians visiting France will now be delivered within 2 working days (48 hours) compared to five to seven days taken earlier. It was also announced that 8 new France Visa Application Centre (VFS) will be opened from 1st December in addition to the 6 existing centres. The new centres will come up in Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Pune, Goa, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Hyderabad and Jaipur. The visa applications submitted in these centres will take 72 hours to be processed as these will be forwarded to the nearest consulates. To make visa application submission hassle free, now all citizens of India can deposit their appliaction in any of the France visa centres in India.
France embassy has also revealed that the number of visas issued by them has jumped by 33% in 2014 compared to 2013. They have delivered 80,000 visas from January to October, 2014 and this number is expected to reach 90,000 by the end of this year.
