Soaring hotel prices, crackdown on illegal renting

PARIS — Visitors heading to Paris for next year’s Olympics face major accommodation problems amid soaring hotel prices and a crackdown on rentals of tourist apartments. A report by the Paris tourism office showed that hotel prices would rise by a whopping 314 per cent between the 2023 and 2024 summers. “We want popular Games, and it can’t be popular Games at 700 euros a night,” Frederic Hocquard, Paris’s deputy mayor for tourism and night life, told Reuters on Monday. The report also hit out at the Paris hotels for waiting too long to open their booking platforms for the July 26 to Aug. 11 Games. “Some 66 per cent of the hotels are still not available for booking for the period of the Olympics,” the report said.