"High prices and fear-mongering" - tourists unhappy with Paris Olympics
The expected Olympic tourists did come, but the big event scared off regular tourists, much to the chagrin of Parisian restaurateurs and hoteliers.
As Azernews reports, citing the Austrian newspaper Die Presse, the first week of the Olympics is coming to an end - and many restaurateurs and hoteliers in Paris are disappointed.
"We were told that 15 million people would visit Paris, but where are they?" asks Arnaud Page, who runs restaurants and bars on the Seine.
"The Olympics have driven away ordinary tourists with high prices and fear-mongering," says Didier Arino, head of the consultancy Protourisme.
The expected Olympic tourists have indeed arrived. According to the Choose Paris association, which promotes the French capital as a tourist destination, the number of foreign visitors has increased by about 20 percent since the start of the Olympics compared to the previous year.
At Disneyland Paris, which is usually very busy in the summer, the theme park's app shows significantly shorter wait times for various rides than is typical for this time of year. Taxi drivers this week expressed "massive frustration" at the lack of passengers and demanded compensation from the government because of the huge disruption to traffic caused by security measures around the Games.
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