Drop in the visitor numbers for Paris Summer Olympics? Know more about the latest travel updates

Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Many people including residents are avoiding Paris this summer, despite prognostications that a travel boom was all but assured.

It’s a common misconception that host cities see an explosion of travelers around the Olympic Games, said John Grant, chief analyst at the aviation intelligence company OAG.

The phenomena of the Olympics is that the local market doesn’t travel, he said.

Plus the regular business traveler who would normally be traveling during that moment in time, stops [and] stays at home.

London, Athens and Atlanta all saw a drop in summer visitors when they hosted the Summer Games, said Grant.

Big losses by key airlines

AirFrance-KLM on Thursday announced the company is anticipating a third-quarter hit to its unit revenues of 150-170 million Euros ($163-184 million) because of lackluster demand to visit Paris this summer.

Air France flagged problems earlier this month, announcing on July 1 that traffic to and from Paris was lagging behind other major European cities.

Not only was interest down, but “international markets show a significant avoidance of Paris,” the company stated.

Similarly, Delta Air Lines is also projecting a big hit — upwards of $100 million in revenue — because of a drop in travel volume to France as a direct result of the Summer Games.

“Unless you’re going to the Olympics, people aren’t going to Paris,” CEO Ed Bastian told a news channel.

Neither airline increased capacity much — Air France by 5%, and Delta by none — compared with last August, he said. Rather, their losses relate to fare pricing, he said.

“They’ve been holding out trying to sell fares at a higher price than market demand would support,” he said, adding that the airlines eventually discounted these fares to grab whatever revenue they could.

In its June tourism barometer, Paris’ tourism board projected a drop in international air arrivals across all markets during the lead-up to the Olympic Games — down 8% in June and nearly 15% in July, compared with 2023.

The tourism board is also expecting an 11% increase in arrivals during the Games, spurred by visitors from Europe (+24%) and North America (+15%) but offset by sharp drops in arrivals from the Middle East (-42%) and Oceania (-30%).

Empty Airbnbs and unsold tickets
Hotels, too, are feeling the pinch of Paris’ summer slowdown, with occupancy rates expected to drop to 60% in early July, down some 10 points from 2023, according to Paris’ tourism board.

Like the airlines, many hotels raised rates to take advantage of the tourism bump, only to discount them following a spring season of slow bookings.

Still, average rates are up nearly 70% this July, from 202 euros last year to 342 euros during the Olympic period, Paris’ tourism board said.

Estimates from the travel price comparison website Trivago show rates have jumped even more, up 85% year on year in Paris, and 131% in Lille, which is hosting some of the Games’ basketball and handballs competitions.

Airbnb hosts are also cutting rates — some by more than 50%.

A two-bedroom loft near the Notre Dame slashed its nightly rate from $1,407 to $683 during the first week of the Games — which is lower than its nightly rate in the fall.

Airbnb said listings in Paris reached an all-time high this summer, as enterprising Parisians jumped at the chance to simultaneously escape the crowds and cash in on sports tourists’ propensity to spend.

Airbnb told the news channel that tens of thousands of people in host cities had opened their homes for the first time. But the company declined to say the number of listings that remained unbooked during the Games.

Airbnb also said “domestic interest” for stays during the Games has never been higher than in the weeks leading up to Paris Games.

‘The Olympics is too broad’
Last-minute travelers can still snag tickets to the Paris Games. Out of 10 million tickets for sale, 8.95 million have been sold or allocated as of Thursday, Paris’ 2024 press office stated.

In an era where “sports tourism” and event-focused, experience-led travel rule the day, it may seem surprising that the pinnacle of global competitions — in which the world’s top athletes are competing in one of its most popular cities — didn’t result in a greater travel bump to its host city