KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Hotels in Paris are tripling prices to over €1,000 on average for the 2024 Olympic Games’ opening night, as revealed by a study from consumer organisation UFC-Que Choisir.
• The study indicates that the average cost of a double room on July 26, the day of the opening ceremony, will be €1,033, a significant jump from €317 two weeks earlier.
• About 50 per cent of these hotels are fully booked for that night, and 30 per cent require a minimum stay of at least two nights, with some establishments asking for as many as five nights.

The study, based on a late-December poll of 80 three and four-star hotels, revealed that on the night of July 26, the day of the Olympics’ opening ceremony, the average cost of a double room will be €1,033. This is a significant increase compared to the average of €317 two weeks earlier on the night of July 12, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

A total of 50 per cent of these hotels reported being completely booked that night, while 30 per cent required a minimum booking of at least two nights, and others asked for as many as five nights, as reported by Reuters.

The average required minimum stay was 3.4 days for an average cost of €867 per night, according to UFC.

Olympic room rates! Paris hotels are not holding back, their room rates are on fire.

It noted that the three-star hotel had increased prices for a double room to €2,083 in comparison to €304 two weeks earlier. At the same time, one four-star hotel required a minimum booking of four nights at €2,095 per night.

According to Reuters, the Paris tourism office expects nearly 16 million visitors in the broader Paris region for the Olympics and Paralympics, thus creating increased demand for housing and hotels.

Airbnb has encouraged Parisians to rent out their homes during the games to help keep prices down.

In the Seine-Saint-Denis area north of Paris, where the Olympic Village is being built, a large number of migrants, asylum seekers and Roma squatting in empty buildings have been forced to leave, thus worsening the city’s homelessness issue.

France will become the first country in the EU to make the application procedures for a French Schengen Visa completely online and issue visas to about 70,000 applicants who will be participating in the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

From January this year, France has introduced a new system called the “Olympic Consulate”. This system will process applications for nearly 15,000 international athletes, 9,000 journalists as well as delegations from foreign states participating in the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

It [the system] is indeed necessary to guarantee the issuance of visas within timeframes compatible with the successful organisation of the Games.

The French authorities have introduced the system in order to avoid mixing up applications with the flood of files being processed at French visa centres worldwide.