Other hotels, particularly Thistle Group, Hilton Worldwide and some Mayfair hotels are seriously considering withdrawing their rooms too — putting at risk the accommodation for some Olympic officials and guests.
Management of the hotels are furious that they had committed to providing the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games a large percentage of rooms under a fixed-price preferential scheme, based on the previous three years’ rates, only to discover Locog had passed on some of those rooms to their third-party ticket providers, Thomas Cook and US-based CoSport.
The two companies paid an undisclosed sum to Locog to gain access to the Olympic tickets and preferential-rate rooms and become official resellers.
Weeks of negotiations between Locog and the British Hospitality Association failed to resolve the row.
The prices being charged by Thomas Cook and CoSport have up to 300 per cent markups. One Park Lane hotel that usually charges £224 a night is being marketed by Thomas Cook for two nights with some
Olympic tickets for £5,300. Locog says the high prices reflect the “certainty” of being able to buy the tickets, as opposed to entering the public ballot.
But the hotels are refusing to sign agreements with the two ticket providers and scores of hotels have told Locog to formally withdraw their hotel rooms from the scheme or from providing them to any third parties.
Premier Inn said in a statement: “We do not intend to allow anyone to exploit our customers during the Olympics or any other major event, and we have asked Locog to honour our agreement and withdraw the rooms given to the third party.”
The co-operation of the hotels was central to the London 2012 bid and helped convince International Olympic Committee members that ‘price gouging’, one of the problems facing host cities, had been addressed.
Thomas Cook was the successful tender for a ”short breaks” ticket packages from Locog more than 15 months ago, which enabled it access to 300,000 tickets and 4,500 hotel rooms at the preferential rates. Locog has been unable to clarify if the rooms allocated to CoSport and included in premium packages costing more than £11,000 are provided under the preferential scheme.
But Premier Inn said it was upset the rooms were passed to a third party. “These rooms were to be allocated to groups connected to the event, not the general public, and we have been disappointed to learn that some of the rooms allocated to Locog have been passed on to a third party who have significantly marked them up for onward sale,” it said.
Hilton Worldwide said that the situation was “unacceptable”. Locog did not return calls on Thursday.
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