Olympic hotel sale prices really begin?
 

I just got an email from the Corinthia Hotel, an upscale hotel that believes it is a luxury hotel, that they are now offering rates of GBP320 up (excl VAT) with no minimum stay during the Olympics. Not sure if all dates are available.

The hotel is located near Charing Cross station.

This is not far above their regular rack, although they often have sales.

In the recent Hoxton sale, they were offering £1 rooms right through August.

IMO, London hotels are far from sold out and prices can only fall in the coming weeks.

I've read this isn't unusual for Olympic host cities and the more I think about it, it doesn't surprise me in the least. I'd never take my wife and kids to see the "canoe sprint" let alone fly half way across the world to do it, but because it's here, I want to do it.

Very few events will surely attract the 'pay anything' brigade. 100m finals and the like maybe, but elsewhere you've presumably got locals (incl. 'near Euorpe') and contestant friends & families. I may have to stay in London during week 1 but I'm not sweating it (and worst case scenario I can be home in 90 mins...)

I suspect too that the high prices are in part a triumph of hope over experience. I remember, for example, in the months before the solar eclipse in 1999, some hotels in Cornwall were charging ridiculously high rates: these rates had to come down in many cases because people simply weren't paying them.

In the mean time, though, hotels lost a lot of business, some of it ongoing, annual business – the eclipse was in August and lots of families and also some retired people take an annual summer holiday or break in that part of the country. Some, I know, found other places that they're still visiting each summer...

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.

Desperation is setting in now. A lot of places seem to be not far off their usual August prices. The Guoman chain, which is only in London in the UK, has even launched a 50% off sale which covers the games. And Park Plaza are giving away a free night (well, 50,000 Carlson points, so actually up to 5 nights!) if you pay for 1 night at the moment, covering all of August.

It's a non-refundable rate, but the Cumberland Hotel through Guoman is right next to a subway station and was a decent rate at 150 GBP.

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

You might be right. I suppose I was thinking that the through-flow of people in London is very much bigger (and less local) than in Cornwall, and so there'll always be more "new" people visiting London, and also that there are a lot more people who "must" come to London (for one reason or another) than to Cornwall.

Lets hope for London's sake that you are more right than I am. London IS London and regardless of any short term negative publicity that she gets for silly proftiteering in July. There are still millions of people around the world that would chew their arms down to a stump for the chance to visit.

Unlikely, given that there are piles of tickets (except from the UK site) and piles of hotel rooms available!

Yes, but in general it remains a popular destination. And if I wanted to visit London for ordinary touristic purposes, or even for business, I wouldn't choose to come around the time of the Olympics if I had no interest in that event - i.e. if I didn't have tickets, basically.

I said to have the chance, I didn't say they are sat on sufficient cash to fly all the way to see the ladies' downhill archery or fork out £200 for a hotel room

the olympics are almost always unique in the hype and then the lack of attendance. for hype and attendance and serious price gouging, there is world cup soccer and nfl playoffs. back in 1980(?) when italy was host country, they even changed their exchange rate.

Italy hosted the world cup in 1990

I don't recall Italy hosting a summer games/circus in the past 40 years. There was the Torino winter circus though.

Point was about the world cup football (a world cup where teams from all over the world participate - now there's a novel idea....)