The 2024 Olympic Games are scheduled to take place from July 26 to August 11, right during the holiday season, so it will attract many tourists to the capital Paris and cause hotel room prices to skyrocket.
However, hotel prices in Paris during the Olympics are now trending down, although they are still much higher than usual, while the number of listings on the Airbnb platform is exploding.
France ready for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics
Unlike the previous media hype about the "money-making" nature of tourist rental properties, as of the end of May 2024, many tourist properties in Paris and surrounding areas registered for rent on online platforms such as Airbnb, Booking, Abritel... are "unsold", many homeowners after pushing up prices, even several thousand euros/night, for properties in prime locations in central Paris.
The daily Le Monde, citing figures from the Paris Tourist Office, said that in February, the average hotel price for one night in the Paris region was 522 euros ($565) during the Olympics, a significant drop from the 759 euros offered in September 2023.
According to Le Parisien newspaper on May 12, in April, rental prices for the Olympics had dropped 31% compared to February, but the number of rental listings on platforms continued to increase. Some people would rather not rent than reduce prices further. Some "bet" on the number of last-minute tenants, because so far there have been few French reservations, while according to France Bleu on May 21, French tourists account for 89% of tourists to the Paris region during the Olympics.
Many landlords are not able to rent their homes for as high a price as they would like.
Not only are they unable to rent out their homes at the high prices they desire, many homeowners, especially those renting out tourist homes in Paris, are also at risk of being heavily fined if they are discovered by city inspectors to have violated regulations, such as renting out homes without reporting them, renting out tourist homes for more than the 120-day/year limit, renting out tourist homes that are not their primary residence, etc. In fact, the Paris city government is currently increasing inspections of tourist rental homes.
While the tourist rental owners in the Paris area had to take a "drenched shower" from the Olympics, the summer sunshine and wind of southern France, especially the coastal areas of Marseille, Nice, or Bordeaux... suddenly attracted visitors, becoming the "big winners".
