Recently in the news, the big discussion on the Olympics was whether Londoners will be given priority to the Olympics 2012 tickets. There is a lot of discussion that tickets will be limited and Londoners will not be able to get to any of the main events.
In Atlanta, 20% of the tickets were allocated to the Olympic family, who are sponsors, officials, VIPs and athletes. This is expected to be about 20% of all tickets for the London Olympics 2012. The Olympic family has about 80,000 people of which 11k are athletes and 30,000 marketing partners.
The opening ceremony tickets are expected to cost about £1,000. In Sydney, the opening ceremony tickets were on average AUS$1,500.
Each household in London is paying out over £200 to pay for the Olympics but we will not get any priorities. All this due to European law. So the UK people will not be allowed to get priority over tickets over anyone else in the EU.
Tickets will be allocated but 80% of these will not be allocated to the public. That means that only 16,000 tickets will be allocated to the public and Londoners will have no ranking against someone from Belgrade or Greece.
Beware of buying fake Olympic tickets
A lots of fake tickets are expected to be sold for the 2012 Olympics, which first showed up at the Beijing games. A lot of these tickets are sold online and when you get the real tickets, they are going to look very authentic. You will only find out they are not real when you try to get in at the venues, please buy tickets from the official ticket site. Real tickets for Olympics London 2012 will only be sold from London2012 website and will only start selling in 2011. If you see sites that sell tickets now, they are fake sites. Please report them or lots of people will get scammed.
The Cultural Olympiad, renamed the Festival of Festivals, will be on for 4 years and will last for 4 years.The weekend before the Olympics, there are plans to turn the Thames into a big festival. It is to show off what is great of Britain and also the participating countries.
Traffic in London during the Olympics
Most of the Olympic officials (IOC) will be staying in the hotels in Park Lane. They Olympic Committee have promised them a travel time of 22 minutes to get to the stadium in Stratford. Some of the roads will have priority lanes to allow faster traffic stream. They are saying that they will use some roads when most people are on holiday. They will also tweak some traffic lights to change traffic flow. Most people think that the priority lanes are not going to work. It is predicted that it will bring London to a standstill.
All Londoners know this and are expecting it to be a real nightmare. The already overloaded tube system is going to be unbearable, and it will be mid summer as well. They might be better off if they stayed closer to Stratford like Canary Wharf, instead of Park Lane, the other end of London. This is meant to be the green games but with this daily convoy to Stratford, it is not going to be very green at all.
The impact of the 2012 Olympics on London Tourist Industry
Organisers are predicting £1.6n into the tourist industry. Some people are not expecting this to be good news and don’t believe the hype. Every Olympics have succeeded in scaring away tourists.
Beijing thought they would be inundated with tourists but saw a 25% decline in visitors. Since Seoul, no Olympics have succeeded in attracting visitors.
Many visitors might be interested but the prices might be way too high by 2010. Some tour operators are already planning to take London off their plans for August 2012.
Frustration and opportunities. All Londoner will be affected one way or other. I am sure more discussions on this will be had all the way up to 2012 so watch this column for more information.
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