Paris hotels are seeing lots of empty space available during the weeks of the Summer Olympics, which will run from July 26 to August 11, despite early hype about how few rooms would be available and at what high prices.
The Independent (UK) quotes Corinne Menegaux, the head of Paris je t’aime, the city’s tourism office as saying she expects hotels to have an occupancy rate of around 60 to 70% for that period, compared to a normal 90+% rate for a normal July.
The director of the Ile de France regional tourism bureau, Christophe Decloux, pointed out that the region has about 160,000 rooms, more than London had in 2012, so there will be no shortage. He expects prices will drop closer to the summer as they did in London, saying occupancy bounced back “as soon as the prices met the actual demand of the customer.”
Menegaux also suggested that many of the spectators for the Olympics won’t be needing rooms in Paris at all, as she expects many visitors to be from the region itself or elsewhere in France, pointing out that such cities as Lyon, Strasbourg and Bordeaux are within a two-hour train journey to Paris.
