Expedia Inc (NASDAQ: EXPE), a US-based online travel company, has announced that average hotel rates for the London 2012 Olympics are likely to fall further, as the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) has released rooms that had previously been held back.
LOCOG, the organising committee for the Games, has surrendered around 8,000 hotel rooms to the market, which has seen a 25 percent drop in prices recently. LOCOG plans to release around 12,000 hotel rooms soon, to lower the average room rate for the Games still further.
The company is reporting that, currently, the average price of a hotel stay in London to coincide with the Games is £208 per night, which is lower than the predicted room rate of GBP280 per night reported at the beginning of the year.
Andy Washington, Expedia UK managing director, said, ‘A number of rooms have been released by LOCOG, so the average daily rate of a hotel room has been coming down. It’s been around 8,000 since the start of the year but we expect another 12,000 to come soon. We have seen this rate drop by six per cent in the last two weeks alone.’
Expedia is also reporting that currently there is not a shortage of rooms for Games visitors, with its website alone offering around 4,000 available rooms around these dates. Overseas visitors are expected to fly into Britain through the regional airports, including Manchester and Glasgow, with cheaper flights, avoiding major airports like Heathrow.
