London's Mayor promised the 2012 Olympics will be “Good for this city and for the tourist economy”, but travel industry insiders are warning that the capital faces a slump in visitor numbers as both tourists and business travellers shun the capital.
“After six years of hype, we will see two weeks of 'blip', as visitors stay away from London,” said Jonathan Callow, managing director of Incentive World Travel. He has followed travellers' behaviour over the past five Olympiads, and predicts both tourist numbers and business travellers will stay away in droves, and hoteliers' expectations of cashing in on the event will prove inflated. Forty thousand hotel rooms are reserved for Locog, the organising committee for the Games. The Hilton Hotels website shows that, of the 22 properties classified as “London”, only three have any availability, and none is within 15 miles of the city centre. The only Hilton rooms are in Watford, Cobham and Dartford Bridge, at £290 a night during the Olympics.
Simon Dugan, director of sales for the business travel agency Ian Allan Travel, said: “Our advice to customers has been to avoid London if you possibly can, because it's going to cost a lot of money.”
The Olympics will run only from 27 July to 12 August, but there is also pressure before and: some overseas tour operators, such as the big US firm, Tauck Travel, have cancelled all trips to the UK between mid-July and late August.
Individual travellers, as well as agencies, are complaining that with so many beds removed from the market - especially among four- and five-star hotels - prices in the remainder are being sold at highly inflated prices. Mr Callow believes that about three months before the Games, room rates will start to fall dramatically as hoteliers panic. Mr Dugan believes rooms could being sold at heavy discounts through websites such as Groupon and Travelzoo. “Greece [in 2004] was a good example of the miscalculation of the interest and uptake, and what people were prepared to pay,” he said. The events themselves will attract hundreds of thousands of visitors from the UK and the world, and the tourism authorities are banking on long-term benefits to the UK visitor economy.
Mark Di-Toro of VisitBritain said: “London 2012 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enhance the image of the UK as a visitor destination, showing the best that Britain has to offer and creating a tourism legacy for years to come.” His organisation has launched a campaign aiming to attract four million extra visitors to the UK over the next four years, spending an additional £2bn.
Evidence from Sydney in 2000 and Athens in 2004 suggests that “normal” tourists are deterred from visiting Olympic host cities, because of fears of finding a city in lockdown. For London, there have also been widely publicised concerns about the capacity of the public transport system.
- The Independent