France is looking to the key market of Chinese tourists and has announced plans to shorten the time needed to process visa applications for them.
The country two years ago whittled down the time frame from some 10 days to just 48 hours.
Now it plans to halve that and produce visas in just one day, according to Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
He said a "record" number of Chinese holidaymakers were in France in 2015, estimating the number to be more than two million.
Data released by Regional Tourism Committee showed the number of Chinese visiting Paris jumped by 49% over the period against last year's performance.
"The goal we have set with our Chinese officials, is to reach quickly 5 million (Chinese tourists)," Fabius said, attributing the growing share of Chinese market to the "excellent relations between Chinese and French authorities."
The majority of Chinese take their holidays within Asia, but the trend of visiting Europe is growing, prompting many European countries to reduce the bureaucracy involved in getting there.
Fabius told reporters he expected "to be able to announce very soon a move to 24-hour processing in China for tourist groups who come to France."
He added that other processing times would also be reduced to 48 hours, notably for tourists from Indonesia, Turkey, Georgia, Vietnam and Armenia. This would bring the time to that of existing waiting times for India, the Gulf States and South Africa.
France is the world’s most popular country for visits with more than 84 million tourists in 2014. Its largest market is the US, followed by China.
