Paris – The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics begin this week and athletes from around the world arrive to prepare for the competition. France, however, has been preparing for several years and everyone in Paris is satisfied with the disruption those arrangements have caused.
Some Parisians have complained for months on social media about the state of the French capital, with some warning tourists to stay away.
“If you’re thinking of coming to Paris for the Olympics. . . Don’t come! Don’t come. . . The city of Paris is making hell on earth,” one resident warned in an online speech.
City officials insist that the Summer Games will be a huge success, but Parisians have fled their city en masse and tourism, unexpectedly, is declining.
Work similar to the Olympics made traveling to Paris much more complicated and expensive. Paris metro costs doubled, students were pushed off campuses to be part of the Olympic staff, and rents skyrocketed.
“People who were thinking about coming to Paris for the holidays, most made the decision not to come because, first of all, the city is very crowded, and second of all, the costs are high,” said Gail Boisclair, who runs the Perfectly Paris real estate agency. rental agency. company, she told CBS News. “Tourists just don’t need to deal with it. “
He said U. S. travelers who stop over for a summer vacation in Europe have largely chosen to stop in Spain, Britain and Ireland this year, and that includes some regular travelers who stop in the City of Light.
“I have a lot of returning visitors, and if they didn’t have to be here for work, they would just say ‘forget 2024, we’re waiting for next year. ‘
Many tourists chose Paris before the Olympics, but even they found the city unwelcoming.
Ian and Belinda Caulfield, new to Wales, were surprised by the scale of the paintings and the difficulty of getting around.
“I know it’s in a safe part of the city, but if you just want to walk along the Seine, there are a lot of obstacles,” Ian said.
Belinda said the couple learned they had to walk further than expected due to detours around the Olympic sites.
Eva and Agnes from Norway also had difficulties getting where they wanted to go.
“We crossed the Seine to here and it closed, so we had to go through many buildings to get where we wanted,” Eva says.
They didn’t cancel any of their projects, but Eva said in hindsight, “It would have been better to come here next year, not this year. “
High accommodation costs also keep tourists away. Hotels raised their costs more than a year ago, with some asking double or more than previous rates for rooms with views of the Seine and the domain where the opening rite will take place on July 26.
Many Parisians also think that it would be time to take advantage of the expected greater influx by renting out their accommodation. But the number of visitors has decreased by up to 30%, according to some studies.
“People were thinking, oh, four times more, five times more, who knows,” Boisclair said. Last year, he informed landlords of rental apartments that he had controlled raising their rates by 30% for the Games, but still no more.
Those who followed his recommendation discovered guests, he said. Others wanted to wait to try and collect more.
“We can retire with the source of income that we will get for two and a half weeks from the Olympics,” he said. But this bet did not pay off.
Tens of thousands of rental apartments and hotel rooms remain empty as the market is flooded with offers. A quick look at popular hotel and apartment booking sites shows that costs are falling, but offers still far exceed demand.
Others in Paris found themselves homeless at the Olympics. More than 3,000 student rooms on the capital’s university campuses have been requisitioned to house all the police and firefighters mobilised for the Games.
While most of the students are on summer vacation, several thousand are considering staying in their rooms for internships in the capital or study projects. Several told Le Parisien that it was stressful to have to move and look for another position to live in a time when rents have dropped. shot up.
Many of those who work in the tourism industry also had an unpleasant surprise this year. Some Parisian cafes and restaurants located within limited Olympic spaces are considering closing their doors during the Games because it will be too difficult for other people to access them.
Some taxi drivers said they would paint the first days of the Games at the end of July and then decide if it was worth staying in the city or, if things were quiet, just going on holiday in August.
Tourism consultancy Lily Heise routinely earns most of its annual revenue stream during the summer, but not this year.
“I was very excited about Paris hosting the Olympics and I imagined that would lead to an increase in bookings,” she told CBS News. “But in the last two months, bookings have fallen by about 50%. June and July are among the “The busiest months of the year for the tourism sector in Paris. The loss of source of income is significant and it is difficult to know if there will be tourists in the autumn, once the Games are over”.
The Paris Games are expected to raise $12 billion. It’s expensive for an Olympic Games, but many in Paris feel they themselves have paid a premium in other ways.