Paris, prices already skyrocketing for the Olympics: “Next July an average of 700 euros per night, plus 314 percent in a year”
Fans of the sport of the five circles, and in general anyone who wants or needs to find themselves at Paris in the next one Olympic summer they risk having to face serious problems in finding accommodation, caught in the grip of waiting, a very heavy surge in hotel prices on the one hand, and of the restrictive reform that the French government is about to approve on the taxation of short-term rentals on the other .
A study by the tourist office of Ville Lumière estimates that hotel prices in summer 2024 will experience an average increase of 314 percent compared to the hot season just past. “We would like popular Games, but we can’t consider them as such at a hotel cost of 700 euros per night,” he says Frederic Hocquard, deputy mayor of the transalpine capital with responsibility for tourism and night entertainment. The report then underlines what seems like a paradox: “About 66 percent of hotels – writes the report – have not yet opened reservations for the Olympic period, between 26 July and 11 August”.
Exaggerated increases: “They will sleep in Lille or Nantes”
According to the tourism office, restricting the analysis to the month of July only, in 2024 the average price of a hotel room in Paris it will be 699 eurosagainst i 169 euros detected a year earlier. “The average increase will be 366 percent for 2-star hotels, 475 percent for 3-star hotels (therefore higher than the average 313.6 ed)”, it is read.
What will happen – adds Hocquard – is that the majority of guests will take a room in Nantes, Lille or Rennesto do ‘commuter tourism’ by train (high speed ed) towards Paris and the Games, thus managing to save money”.
“On the occasion of the London Games, due to excessively high prices, the occupancy rate of rooms in the English capital dropped by 12 percent. You can’t afford to triple prices: maybe you can afford to increase them by 10-15 percent, but tripling them doesn’t work.” “Doing in this fashion only means food the Airbnb monster”.
The new tax on short-term rentals
On this front, however, the French Parliament should soon approve a law that will eliminate the phenomenon of illegal rental of second homes and holiday homes. In Paris, residents can rent out their homes on Airbnb for up to 120 days a year, but Jacques Baudrier, the deputy mayor with responsibility for housing, explains that the city is struggling to enforce the rule. “We have to produce a lot of evidence in this sense, which makes it very difficult to apply sanctions,” he explains to Reuters. “Over the course of a year, there are approximately 20 thousand homes rented illegallyAnd”.
A flaw in the current law favors short-term rentals of furnished apartments. The project that will eliminate it, explains Baudrier, “will be presented to the French Parliament on November 28, and we are confident that it will be approved. We have no problems with those who rent according to the law, only with those who do it illegally.”
Since June, the French Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, had expressed himself “in favor” of the reform of the rental tax system for furnished holiday homes, due to its significant “manna effect”. Between 2021 and 2023, owners who rented out their homes illegally in Paris received fines totaling 6.5 million euros.
