Originally Posted by
Christopher
That scenario won't play out in London, of course, but I do sometimes wonder at the wisdom of pushing prices sky-high because of a one-off event.
I think it has a worse impact for London. Typically any olympic host city actually damages its own tourism as short sighted profiteering bumps prices up then tourists from pretty much every single country on the planet go home afterwards and tell everyone how expensive it was there.
So for two weeks you get the chance to showcase on TV the best that your city has to offer, the swing park in Silvertown, the bus garage in Bow and Hackney's numerous reverred fried chicken outlets. Then when everyone goes home all that good work gets unstitched.
Champions League final 2008 in Moscow is a great example of a city becoming renowned for ridiculous hotel prices after a short term price hike