Paris is heading for an Olympic-sized disaster

You know if you go back and read media for any city that’s had the Olympics you will read the exact same statements. I don’t know where we had our homeless people in Atlanta during the Olympics but I know they weren’t hanging around where they usually are so we must’ve bussed them out somewhere.

And poetic justice often gets those landlords. Because the demand is never quite as high as people think it’s going to be.

When the Mayor of Paris says seven months before the event that the Metro doesn’t have enough trains to move the 15 million people around who are expected to attend the games; when the police from all around France are asked to sign up to help with security with so little incentive to do so that they threatened to strike and withold their services; when the Metro and Bus workers are offered a 1 percent raise after RATP announced a doubling of single Metro ticket prices during the Olympics; and when no regulations were put in place to prevent mass evictions so landlords can convert their apartments to Air B&B’s for a few weeks and laugh all the way to the bank—-
You have to ask why wasn’t this all anticipated and worked out last year?
What looks like a lack of comprehensive planning is simply astounding, particularly for the capital of France which has the financial and Human Resources to have managed this much better.

As stated by previous posters, housing prices increasing dramatically is pretty commonplace in Olympic hosts, though it's true that Paris already has an existing housing crisis, and this is a huge issue.

As a reminder, this forum is not here to generate opinions about current events. MSN already has a comments section.

The content of any further replies should clearly indicate how this news applies to travel. Replies that don't provide travel advice may lead to the removal of this thread.

The challenge, particular to only some Summer Olympics host cities (the Winter Olympics are much smaller and not held in tourist season), is how big of a destination are they in regular summer seasons. Paris is in the top 5. I see lots of references to folks planning their visit around the specific Olympic dates, but still planning to visit. I saw a list today of the Metro stations that will be closed during the Olympics; 5 or 6 with 2 being in the middle of all things tourist driven. Undoubtedly there will be a range of experiences and impressions. I wish Paris well.

Just to note, the government, the president of the Paris region, and the Paris mayor are all from opposing political parties.

When Hidalgo says that the transport systems won't be ready, she is making a dig at her political opponents who run the Paris-area transport (the president of the Paris region) and the national network (the government).

I would take anything that any of them say with several grains of salt.

An interesting note for travelers planning to come during the Olympics : there is someone who has been tracking the average cost of lodgings reserved through the main booking platforms (Booking.com, AirBnB, Abritel, PAP) for the dates encompassing the Olympics -- and people who reserved for those dates in the month to February 18 paid on average 13% less than those who had booked for those same dates in the month to January 18. So lodging prices for travelers during the Olympics seem to be coming down at least a little bit. Average per night for those reserving (for the summer) between Jan 19 and Feb 18 was €886 per day. Those who had reserved the prior month for the same Olympics dates paid on average €1021 per day.

Oh well....doubtful they will cancel them :)

I'm looking forward to it! The only sad thing is that they had to move the last stage of the TdF from Paris to Nice! I guess I will have to "suffer" staying in Nice for 4 nights :)