London is a ghost town
Tourists who normally travel to London in the summer shine the Olympic city. The Financial Times writes that London has turned into a ghost town.
The Olympic Games in 2012 has attracted 100,000 foreign visitors to London, but tourists who would normally have gone to the city to see Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the Tate Modern has chosen other cities to holiday in.
British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has said that the OS will provide 13 billion in economic investment in four years. Much of the money has been estimated to come from tourism. But in a short time, the advantages of OS in many places less visible.
- The message that has been put in months is that London would be packed to the roof, and that the transport system would be under pressure and it has scared away many people, Mark field said, a London Conservative MP. Chief executive of Nimax Theatre told the Financial Times that the sale one week after the Olympics was the worst in the year.
- We are bleeding, darling, she says to the Financial Times.
Already in June 2011 predicted the tourism industry that the Olympics would not be the tourist success as portrayed. Although the Games in London are the most popular ever including the large price increases for hotel rooms and warnings about gridlock scared away many of the usual London tourists. Sales to the theater, museums and other tourist attractions have fallen by between 30 and 35 percent writes the Financial Times. Hotels have lowered their prices. Research by Hotels.com says to the British business magazine that hotel prices have fallen by about 25 percent over a two-week period in June 2012.

After London seven years ago won over Paris on Olympic host was the long sad faces in the French capital. But the longer the time since the International Olympic Committee’s decision, the more the French softened up. An easy example of this is the campaign "Celebrate Your Victories in Style", an initiative in which the tourist office in Paris promises that for every gold medal the host country wins in London offer two British tourists on a free week at the Eiffel Tower.
Not that Paris has an urgent need for more tourists. If there is any city that would need extra tourist flows during the Olympics, it is paradoxically London.
Every time a major championship to be held crawl forward, analysts and experts who proclaim how much additional revenue the races will give the city in question. The same was in the Hockey World Cup and the European Athletics Championships earlier this year. "Championships will generate so many millions for Helsinki."
Personally, I have long since stopped believing in such prophecies. Partly because a sufficient number of wise men and women in detail explained why spending almost always be greater than revenues for cities and countries that organize major championships. And partly because I myself have seen how it works in practice.
London is an excellent example. OS has attracted some tourists, but discouraged many more. Those who do not live for sports, choose a different time course than the Olympics to go and see Big Ben. And while stopping half of those who actually live in the city in front of television sets.
As a result, parts of central London at night turns into a ghost town. Covent Garden is fate, events tickets not selling, and restaurants and hotels are empty. Shops across London reports 50-percent race in sales compared to the same period the year before the Olympics.
Local newspapers are getting full of surprised and indignant letters from people to the editor saying it shouldn’t look like this.
Public relation you might say, but is there actually someone who can ensure that people are so inspired by a volleyball match on television that they decide in the future to book a trip to London? And also the British won no gold in the Olympics. Londoners' misery was becoming complete, until finally came the time for "God Save The Queen". The thing is that the French have won even more. So no doubt which country was the biggest winner in London so far. First, pick a bunch of French medals. Firstly, they do not organize the Olympics.