Soaring hotel prices, crackdown on illegal renting to hit Paris 2024 experience

PARIS : Visitors heading to Paris for next year's Olympics face major accommodation problems amid soaring hotel prices and a crackdown on rentals of tourist apartments.

A report by the Paris tourism office showed that hotel prices would rise by a whopping 314 per cent between the 2023 and 2024 summers.

"We want popular Games, and it can't be popular Games at 700 euros a night," Frederic Hocquard, Paris's deputy mayor for tourism and night life, told Reuters on Monday.

The report also hit out at the Paris hotels for waiting too long to open their booking platforms for the July 26 - Aug. 11 Games.

"Some 66 per cent of the hotels are still not available for booking for the period of the Olympics," the report said.

According to the Paris Tourism office, a hotel night in the Paris region was 169 euros in July 2023, and it is expected to soar up to 699 euros in July 2024.

"The rise is 366 per cent for the two-star hotels and 475 per cent for the three-star hotels," it said.

"What is going to happen is that people will take a hotel room for 200 euros a night in Nantes, Lille or Rennes and commute by train and they will save money this way," Hocquard added.

"At the London Games, the prices were too high and the occupation rate of hotels went 12 per cent down. You can't triple the price of the rooms. Maybe you can allow, a 10, 15 per cent increase, but tripling the prices won't work.

"The way it is going, we're going to feed the Airbnb beast."

Visitors might opt for Airbnb, but the French parliament is expected to pass a law to crack down on illegal renting of tourism homes.

In Paris, residents are allowed to rent their place on Airbnb for a maximum 120 days a year, but Jacques Baudrier, Paris's deputy mayor in charge of housing, said the