00:00 Now, with the excitement over the arrival of the Olympic flame in France,
00:04 many hotels in Marseille have been fully booked for weeks and months.
00:08 Solange Mougin is here with us. Solange, great to see you as always.
00:11 Now, whether it's Marseille, here in Paris or other French cities,
00:14 hotels have been hopeful but also a bit disappointed about this event-packed season.
00:19 Tell us more.
00:20 Yeah, let's start with Marseille and then we will head north to Paris.
00:23 The city of Forissiennes, or Marseille, says that compared to last year,
00:27 there's been a 60% increase in both the number of hotel rooms
00:31 and also private apartments that were booked for this one event today.
00:34 And so many in Marseille, well, they are pretty happy about the influx of visitors.
00:39 And the president of the region, he actually expects there to be an economic windfall
00:43 for the entire area of between five to eight hundred million euros for this one event.
00:49 So that's pretty good news for Marseille's tourism industry.
00:52 But if we go north to Paris, some hotels are pretty nervous.
00:56 They're nervously biting their fingernails about whether they will get the reservations
01:00 that they need for the games of late. Reservations of Paris's over 86,000 hotel rooms.
01:06 Well, they've leveled off and even the prices per night for the Olympics, they've dropped.
01:12 It did so by some 40% in April compared to six months prior.
01:16 So hotels are counting, are continuing to sort of adjust to demand.
01:21 This is occurring because sports federations,
01:23 well, they can progressively cancel some of their mass bookings, which opens up more rooms.
01:28 And also there are thousands of offers from sites like Airbnb,
01:32 which it says it expects some 130,000 offers in total for the Paris region for the games.
01:38 Now, many of these flat of those flat owners, well, they have also lowered their prices.
01:43 But the combination of that competition and also less than hope for demand has been nerve wracking
01:49 for the tourism industry, which fears that tourists have decided to stay away from the capital this year.
01:57 You want people to come and explore the city and go to the games.
02:01 It would be more attractive if the prices of the hotels were not so expensive.
02:06 Everyone could watch sports. Don't depend some money on what you can afford, right?
02:13 But that doesn't mean the roll up to the Olympics is a bust or that the overall five to ten billion,
02:19 again, a big range there, economic boost could occur, won't occur rather.
02:24 Rather, it simply means that Paris is so far following in the footsteps of London,
02:29 their Olympics, where many hotels were not fully booked,
02:32 but the price of rooms were so high that it evened things out in 2012.
02:36 It also led to stellar tourism in the years following the games.
02:41 So how much are the prices of these rooms on average?
02:44 Well, as I just described, it really flux, prices really fluctuate.
02:48 That depends on when you book, if it's for the Olympics and the opening ceremony or not,
02:54 the kind of hotel, of course.
02:56 But the average, according to the Paris Tourism Board, is currently 452 euros a night.
03:02 That is double the price from last July, so same period from last July.
03:07 Some hotels are even seven times more expensive.
03:10 Prices run the gamut, of course, but hotel owners are constantly adjusting this.
03:14 And of course, they want to get as much money as they can.
03:18 Normally, our average price is 330 euros for a standard room.
03:25 It goes up to 530 euros around July 26th for the start of the games.
03:31 We do need to align ourselves a bit with our colleagues and competitors in the area.
03:36 Now, it's important to keep in mind that most of the visitors for the games,
03:39 well, they will be French. Some 90% of the expected 16 million people coming for the games
03:45 will be French, according to Le Monde.
03:47 So they may be, these French visitors may be even more cautious and careful with their pocketbooks
03:52 than those who are coming from afar.
03:54 Now, that's the Olympics.
03:56 But ahead of the Olympics, this weekend, something's starting.
04:00 Tell us.
04:01 Yeah, it is Tay-Tay time in Paris.
04:02 Come with me if you said that.
04:04 I did.
04:05 It is Tay-Tay time in Paris as Taylor Swift gets ready for her four concerts here.
04:12 Hotels are not weeping over their champagne problems.
04:16 According to Bloomberg, the Paris shows they're actually drawing five times more luxury American tourists
04:22 than the Olympics are.
04:23 And the arena where she'll be singing, where over 40,000 fans will be singing with her in unison starting tomorrow,
04:30 well, it says that 20% of the tickets, one in five of them, were brought by American, were bought by Americans.
04:37 So there's a lot of jet setting going across the Atlantic right now.
04:41 Of course, that comes with environmental impact.
04:44 Well, she's always flying a private jet.
04:45 Yeah, she, yeah.
04:48 Her, yes, but think about all those fans.
04:50 Let's be honest.
04:52 Nonetheless, between her spending and, but also the spending around her,
04:57 there is a Swiftonomics windfall.
05:01 There's also a lot of hotel rooms that are booked up.
05:04 But not all Swifties are booking hotels.
05:07 There are a whole bunch that have already started camping out in front of the concert venue.
05:11 I saw.
05:12 Yeah, trying to get in first.
05:13 I don't understand.
05:14 Thank you very much for that, Solange Mougin.
05:17 They're telling us everything we need to know about hotel rooms in France in the run-up to the Olympics.
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