A dark-skinned man taps me on the shoulder as I walk through the centre of Calais and points to the floor.

“Paper, paper,” he says in a Middle Eastern tone as I realise I have dropped some of my notes. My chaperone for the day, French businessman Thaddee Segard, smiles.

“Not all migrants are problem,” he says with a stereotypically Gallic shrug and raising of the eyebrows.

Mr Segard is showing me around the businesses and restaurants in the town that have been hit hard by the arrival of 6,000 migrants in the Jungle, the refugee camp for people fleeing conflict in Syria and north Africa, and which is barely five minutes drive from the town centre.

He gave me a tour of the town before the terrorist atrocities in Paris two weeks ago, in which 130 people died.

There were hardly any tourists looking at Hotel de Ville, the town hall, a mix of neo-Renaissance and Flemish architecture with art deco stained-glass windows.

The town’s 255ft bell tower Le Beffroi, which offers panoramic views of the town centre and is listed as a World Heritage site, was pretty empty.

Now the plight of the town, heavily reliant on tourist trade, is expected to worsen further amid growing security fears in France.

Calais has suffered a decrease in footfall of about 30% since August, which is “in the major part down to the absence of British people”, according to Solange Leclercq, the town’s tourist office manager.

“This season was not as good as usual,” she said. “Every year we welcome up to 60,000 people. This year it was less.

“In a normal year about 20% of the people I deal with in the tourist office are British. This summer it has been closer to 8%.”

In addition to the migrants crisis, Mme Leclercq blames the downturn on the blockade of the town’s port over the summer by workers of MyFerryLink, which disrupted ferry travel across the Channel for several months.

“In a normal year about 20% of the people I deal with in the tourist office are British. This summer it has been closer to 8%...” - Solange Leclercq, Calais tourist office

That is not the view of Cyril Boucherat, general manager of the Carrefour hypermarket at the Cité Europe shopping centre.

The store employs 246 people, and there is a total of 1,200 people employed at the mall, which has been owned by Carrefour since January.

“Until June business was very good but in July, after the reaction of the British media, it was hard,” said Mr Boucherat.

“In August it was the same story. It was a real headache.”

Prior to the terrorist attacks, the fightback had begun. Since the summer Carrefour has run discount deals with Eurotunnel to get customers over and has launched a big marketing push, on both sides of the Channel, in the run-up to Christmas.

All that work appears in tatters now.

“The mood here in Calais is on standstill,” said Mr Segard, who has campaigned for years to forge closer ties between Kent and the north of France.

“We will have to wait a bit to see how the situation goes regarding the consequences for Calais. The focus has been shifted from migrants to Isis.”

A change of perception cannot come soon enough for Marilline Dufeutrelle, who owns the Fotonor picture and frame shop on Rue Royale in the centre of Calais.

“People are not coming to Calais,” she said. “It was difficult for people to stay in Calais for a while because the police were taking all the rooms in the hotels.

“It is definitely more difficult than it used to be. We hope it turns around quickly. Otherwise we may have a problem.”