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London Olympics is a big huge tourist bust. Or not.


Skift Take

We may not know what the reality is until much after the games have ended, as collecting data for huge events like Olympics always takes a long time, sometimes even years. But trust London to mess up a good thing going.

Hotel prices have been slashed, and thousands of tickets remain unsold. Olympic package holidays are being flogged at half price and flats near the stadium languish unrented. It looks like the Olympic bubble could well have burst. So says this rather thinly sourced Independent story.

Thomas Cook launched a sale of its Olympic package holidays this weekend to offload unsold ticket and hotel deals.Hotels.com says room prices have dropped by a quarter in the past two weeks, making an average room rate £160 a night.

Then, another story citing data from STR says something else: a forecast for the whole of London to be up in average room rate between 3% and 5% in July and between 16% and 19% in August. And now the spin coming out of London organizers is that the benefits to UK tourism are going to be long term, something every other Olympics venue has said in the past as well.

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