East London Hotels and The Olympics: Wasted Opportunity?

admin — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 23:47:41 +0000

The advent of the Olympic games has seen hotel groups rushing to get new properties built in Docklands and particularly East London (close to the area where most events will take place) in time for the Games’ opening. It’s not every day after all that you get the chance to open a new hotel and get full occupancy straight away, so this is obviously an attractive strategy.Even better, hotels near the Olympics sites have been able to charge astonishingly premium prices. The Travelodge in Stratford, with a normal rate of £50 or so a night is charging well over £200 a night over the Olympic period – a one-time big bonus for the hotel. A night’s stay for 3-4 August was priced at £335.95 for flexible-rate rooms (refundable upon cancellation) when I checked the Travelodge website a while ago – an amazing price – with London Docklands not even having rooms available anymore. That price is pretty rich for a budget hotel chain!Travellers who do not want to pay the price still have options in central London though – the same web search turns up much cheaper in Covent Garden, Tower Bridge, and Waterloo, not to mention the less touristy areas of central London that are even cheaper than that.But recent figures from Vive Unique, which specialises in short term rentals in London, suggest that East London hotels may not have it all their own way. East London is only getting a tiny minority of Vive Unique’s bookings, with nearly 90 percent of the business going to properties outside the ‘Olympic’ boroughs.In particular, West London is getting nearly 40 percent of bookings. Notting Hill is doing especially well and North London gets another 31 percent. Because most visitors aren’t coming just for the Olympics, but combining a visit to the sporting events with more conventional holiday activities, it’s the traditional tourist areas that are in fact seeing better business.That’s sad in a way, because there are some splendid apartments in Docklands that would be great places to stay during the Olympics.And it may suggest that East London has slightly missed the once in a lifetime opportunity to put itself on the tourist map alongside the West End. And if it has indeed, some of those hotels that opened for the Olympics could be looking very empty once the fireworks of the closing ceremony have died away for good.

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East London Hotels and The Olympics: Wasted Opportunity?