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France wants to boost tourism to 100million visitors a year and has told locals to be friendlier and more hospitable to foreigners.

The nation needs to shake off its reputation for being unfriendly and learn to be more hospitable, commerce minister Fleur Pellerin said at a national tourism conference in Paris.

And French finance minister Laurent Fabius echoed her sentiment, saying: 'The logic is simple, an unhappy tourist is a tourist that never comes back.'

Warm welcome: French ministers are urging locals to shake off their reputation for being surly

Ms Pellerin said: 'Tourism is not an amusing or secondary matter. The stakes are the same as exports.

'Too often we mistake service with servility. The country needs to recover a sense of hospitality.'

And the country has grand plans to welcome more foreigners than ever before, opening shops on Sundays and even sprucing up the dismal Gare du Nord, where Britons arrive in Paris on the Eurostar.

Mr Fabius said: 'A tourist who finds the shop closed on Sundays will not wait until Thursday.'

He also compared Gare du Nord with its glitzy British cousin St Pancras, which underwent a huge £800million facelift, reopening in 2007 to great fanfare.

Mr Fabius said: 'The Gare du Nord is Europe's leading railway station and it must be able to stand comparison with Saint Pancras.'

France is the world's most visited country, attracting 83 million tourists in 2012, but the government had now fixed a target of 100 million tourists by 2015, Mr Fabius said.

In need of an upgrade: French foreign minister Laurent Fabius wants Gar du Nord to compete with St Pancras

Timeless elegance: St Pancras was given an £800million pfacelift in 2007, and now has exclusive bars and shops and a five-star hotel on site

The nationwide tourist action plan comes after repeated international  surveys have found that the French capital is one of the world's most hostile places for foreign visitors.

Last year after the Paris Tourist Board issued a 'politeness manual' to service industry workers in bid to change the city's reputation for being the rudest place on earth.

The manual states states that British visitors like 'personalised service' and have breakfast between 7.30am and 8.30am.

The Chinese seek out luxury goods and like to be smiled at, while the Americans enjoy quick service and fluency in English, it said.

Making an impression: The St Pancras Renaissance hotel has helped completely revamp the area around the station

The Spanish try to get things for free and eat dinner at between 9pm and 11pm, the Germans like cleanliness and a handshake, the Belgians prefer budget hotels and WiFi and the Brazilians like physical contact and taxis, the guide said.

The Italians like exploring and welcome attention towards their children, the Japanese are insecure, never complain and bow a lot and the Dutch - like the Spanish - like things for free, it told tourist  industry workers.

Paris attempted a similar campaign three years earlier, hiring 'smile ambassadors' to be friendly to visitors at the city's main attractions.

Paris Tourism spokesman Daniel Fasquelle said at the time: 'If an Englishman gets lost while driving, we must not get impatient with him by honking our car-horns.

'Being impolite to outsiders is going going to send them away to spend  their money somewhere else.'

A survey two years ago by Paris transport operator RATP revealed that 97 per cent of Parisians believed their fellow citizens were 'ill-mannered and lacked civility'.

A separate study by the Tripadvisor website also found foreigners visiting Paris voted it the rudest city in Europe.

Researchers found tourists thought the French capital had the least  friendly locals, the rudest taxi drivers and the most hostile and aggressive waiters.