Dubai: A French trade and investment delegation from the city of Lyon is visiting Dubai this week in a bid to bolster economic ties between the two cities.

“We are promoting Lyon as a brand and we selected a few spots in the world where we want to make Lyon better known and Dubai is one of these,” Jacques de Chilly, Executive Direct of Aderly — Invest in Lyon, told Gulf News.

Aderly is responsible for Lyon’s international marketing and investment promotion.

De Chilly is joined in Dubai this week by Philippe Grillot, President of Lyon’s Chamber of Commerce (CCI Lyon), and members of OnlyLyon, which is responsible for the city’s international promotion.

Since 2007 OnlyLyon has worked with its key stakeholders to market the French city to investors and grow its profile as a tourism destination.

Dubai has been targeted as a priority in the OnlyLyon strategy, making it the only non-European destination the organisation is looking to attract trade, investment, and travellers from.

De Chilly said the decision to prioritise Dubai was simple because of its political, economic, and commercial importance.

Service

Last year its priority strategy received a boost when Dubai flagship carrier Emirates opened a five times a week passenger service between the French city and Dubai.

Lionel Flasseur, Director at OnlyLyon, said that 85 per cent of passengers on the Lyon-Dubai are from the French city and surrounding region with just 15 per cent from other parts of the world.

“There is a huge opportunity to promote Lyon as a key tourist destination to go from Dubai and from the [Middle East] region to go directly to Lyon,” he said.

He said that tourism represented €1 billion (Dh4.9 billion, $1.35 billion) annually for Lyon and its surrounding region.

Evolving as a key tourism destination city, Lyon is well known for its French cuisine and history of architecture. It is also just an hour from the Alps and two hours by high speed train from Paris.

The city’s geographic location has also made it an ideal logistics hub for re-exports to surrounding countries including Germany, Spain, and Italy, de Chilly said, with the once a week cargo service to Lyon flown by Emirates proving successful.

European base

De Chilly also said the city of 2.5 million inhabitants had a strong biotech sector and that it was a destination for Dubai companies to set up a European base.

But Europe is still facing its own challenges stemming from the sovereign debt crisis. Gripped by economic downturn and job shortages, the question is, “why invest in Europe?”

But de Chilly pointed out that the situation was getting better and that simply put, the market was too important to ignore despite the challenges.

“You need to be in Europe to serve the 500 million consumers and Lyon is a good destination and is less expensive than London, Frankfurt, or Paris,” he said.