Olympics 'toxic' to tourism
The European Tour Operators Association has warned that the London Olympics may well turn out to be toxic to tourism in the UK. The ETOA's latest report says: "The problem is not restricted to the host city. London is the gateway to the UK and its biggest draw. If you remove London from a visit to the British Isles, everywhere else becomes far more difficult to sell. Athens has nothing like the central importance that London occupies, yet when its visitor arrivals dropped by 6% in the Olympic year, regional Greece fell by 11%."
"Precisely because London is one of the top international destinations, it has more to lose. At the moment a false expectation of bookings is in danger of destroying an export industry," said the ETOA executive director, Tom Jenkins. "For August 2012, ETOA members – who alone regularly deliver over 15,000 hotel rooms per day – cannot reserve space. Without any reservations to sell, nothing can be sold."
A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport dismissed the report saying: "This is a weary old story. No one seriously believes that any tourist accommodation will remain unfilled during the Games themselves."
However, the ETOA is not the only organisation issuing warnings. PriceWaterhouseCoopers has recently warned hoteliers not to expect a bonanza from the Olympics. VistBritain itself has also warned that visitor numbers would not be maintained during the Olympics. The ETOA points out Sydney in 2000 received 97,000 foreign visitors rather than the anticipated 132,000, Athens expected 105,000 in 2004 and saw fewer than 14,000 while, in August 2008, Beijing only received 234,000 instead of the anticipated 400,000 foreign guests.
A weary old story this may be but that doesn't make it untrue. I remember watching Tom Jenkins being interviewed on BBC TV London News. The interviewer just couldn't accept what he was saying and insisted several times that the Olympics would be wonderful. Wonderful they may be, said Mr Jenkins, but they won't deliver any tourism benefits!
Submitted by Julian Cheyne on Tue, 21/09/2010 - 16:31.
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Beijing hotels slash prices as world shuns Olympics
A continuing problem being experienced by Olympic boosters, if your belief in the London Olympic Games operates via the aspiration to 'live the dream', then the first phase of confronting the, by now, well established truth experienced by every recent Games City of a fall in tourist numbers during the Games, is to disconnect from reality. It is more commonly called 'living in denial'.
A 'weary old story' it may be but the ETOA, like Games Monitor before them, have read the original research papers (read the footnotes in the ETOA reports), which first pointed out this consistent phenomenon.
Perhaps this story from The Scotsman on 23rd July 2008, also reported by Games Monitor, from the Beijing Olympics might be used by Olympic spokespersons as a reality check before trashing the truth.
"HOTELS in Beijing are slashing their room rates for next month's Olympics after an expected rush of visitors failed to materialise.
The Chinese capital had originally been expecting 500,000 foreign guests for the Games, but that estimate has been scaled back. Some people have been scared off by high prices, while others have had trouble getting visas amid tightened security.
Fan Runjun, of the Chinese travel website Ctrip.com, said many two-star to four-star hotels had reduced their prices by between 10 per cent and 20 per cent compared with May and June.
Some had slashed rates by as much as 30 per cent, said Mr Fan, whose site lists about 500 hotels in its English-language section.
The usual pre-Olympic festive atmosphere that host cities experience has not yet hit Beijing, with some hotels feeling empty and listless. In June, the number of tourists heading to Beijing, including overseas and domestic visitors, declined by 19.9 per cent from a year earlier, according to the Beijing Tourism Authority.
Now, average room prices in three-star hotels are down to 400 yuan (£30) per night, from 700 yuan in previous months. Four-star hotels have dropped their rates to about 800 yuan a night, from 1,500 yuan."
More at: The Scotsman
I predict that Olympic boosters will before long exhibit another form of denial by claiming that other aspects of their dreamlife will come true 'in legacy'. This is a whole other realm of their dreamland which is slowly crumbling as austerity comes on stream.