‘Sports tourism’ is huge. But the Summer Olympics caused travel to Paris to plummet

Was it the Parisians who bluntly told travelers “do not come” to Paris during the Summer Games?

Or did sky-high prices for hotel rooms, house rentals and event tickets turn travelers away?  

For a multitude of reasons, many people — including residents — avoided Paris in the build-up to the Olympic Games, despite prognostications that a travel boom was all but assured. Forecasts often focus on the number of people expected to attend the Games, while ignoring the number of travelers who are turned off by them.

It’s a common misconception that host cities see an explosion of travelers around the Olympic Games, said John Grant, chief analyst at the aviation intelligence company OAG.

“The phenomena of the Olympics is that the local market doesn’t travel,” he said. Plus “the regular business traveler who would normally be traveling during that moment in time, stops [and] stays at home.”

London, Athens and Atlanta all saw a drop in summer visitors when they hosted the Summer Games, said Grant.

“It just never quite achieves and delivers what’s expected,” he said.

None of this is a surprise, said Grant.

Neither airline increased capacity much — Air France by 5%, and Delta by none — compared with last August, he said. Rather, their losses relate to fare pricing, he said.

“They’ve been holding out trying to sell fares at a higher price than market demand would support,” he said, adding that the airlines eventually discounted these fares to grab whatever revenue they could.

In its June tourism barometer, Paris’ tourism board projected a drop in international air arrivals across all markets during the lead-up to the Olympic Games — down 8% in June and nearly 15% in July, compared with 2023.

The tourism board is also expecting an 11% increase in arrivals during the Games, spurred by visitors from Europe (+24%) and North America (+15%) but offset by sharp drops in arrivals from the Middle East (-42%) and Oceania (-30%).

Hotels, too, are feeling the pinch of Paris’ summer slowdown, with occupancy rates expected to drop to 60% in early July, down some 10 points from 2023, according to Paris’ tourism board.

Like the airlines, many hotels raised rates to take advantage of the tourism bump, only to discount them following a spring season of slow bookings.

Still, average rates are up nearly 70% this July, from 202 euros last year to 342 euros during the Olympic period, Paris’ tourism board said. Estimates from the travel price comparison website Trivago show rates have jumped even more, up 85% year on year in Paris, and 131% in Lille, which is hosting some of the Games’ basketball and handballs competitions.

Airbnb hosts are also cutting rates — some by more than 50%. A two-bedroom loft near the Notre Dame slashed its nightly rate from $1,407 to $683 during the first week of the Games — which is lower than its nightly rate in the fall.

Airbnb said listings in Paris reached an all-time high this summer, as enterprising Parisians jumped at the chance to simultaneously escape the crowds and cash in on sports tourists’ propensity to spend. Airbnb told CNBC that tens of thousands of people in host cities had opened their homes for the first time.

But the company declined to say the number of listings that remained unbooked during the Games, instead telling CNBC Travel that: “The Olympic Games Paris 2024 is set to be the biggest hosting event in Airbnb’s history,  with more guests staying in local homes on our platform than at any event, ever before.”

Airbnb also said “domestic interest” for stays during the Games has never been higher than in the weeks leading up to Paris Games.

Last-minute travelers can still snag tickets to the Paris Games. Out of 10 million tickets for sale, 8.95 million have been sold or allocated as of Thursday, Paris’ 2024 press office told CNBC.

Still more are available on the ever-growing resale market, where a glut of expensive tickets are attracting few buyers, according to an analysis by the Financial Times.  

In an era where “sports tourism” and event-focused, experience-led travel rule the day, it may seem surprising that the pinnacle of global competitions — in which the world’s top athletes are competing in one of its most popular cities — didn’t result in a greater travel bump to its host city.

But not to Grant.

“The Olympics is too broad … it’s not a specific event,” he said. “There is a tennis gold medal to be had, but it’s not Wimbledon.”

Plus, there are too many events, he said.

“You can’t say they’re not good quality, because they are [but] it’s just too generic.”

— CNBC’s Zenith Wong contributed to this report.