Paris hotels are struggling to fill rooms ahead of the Olympics

According to data from Paris je t’aime, the city’s tourism board, the capital is expecting 11.3 million visitors during the Olympics weeks—of which only 1.5 million will be international. 

While that’s enough to keep stadiums busy, hotels, airlines and travel agencies are feeling a pinch where they had hoped to see a boom.

Alan Bachand, owner of sports travel firm 14sb, has built his business in the past on pre-buying blocks of hotel inventory for major events—the Super Bowl, FIFA World Cup, the Olympics—and packaging it up with tickets at competitive prices for superfans. But this year, he tells Bloomberg that sales have fallen 80% short of his expectations based on previous Olympic games. 

“This is the first time in 25 years that we will accept less money than we paid for hotel rooms that we contracted 30 months ago,” he says.

Normally, he says, his sales begin a year before the event. “But the prices were crazy high—we had to spend $1,000 per night on hotels that would normally cost $400—and if we pay a lot of money, we have to mark ‘em up and sell ‘em for a lot of money,” he explains. “Once everyone realized the phones weren’t ringing, around 100 days out, people started to cut prices in half—and we’ve had to do the same.” 

At this point, Bachand hopes to break even, rather than lose money on the event. But he isn’t sure it will be possible.

Airlines are in similar predicaments. On July 11, Delta Air Lines Inc. estimated it would take $100 million in losses as travelers opted to skip France during the Olympics, leaving too many unsold seats. In a similar situation is AirFrance, which expanded its flight capacity from US cities to Paris by 15% during the games. Its parent company Air France-KLM has so far reported revenue loss of at least 180 million euros ($195.5 million) in July and August, which it attributes to the Olympics. With many of its added seats still unsold, it too is slashing prices—particularly for people booking with points, where the discounts are more opaque.

“Cities with non-stop flights to Paris like New York, Chicago, Atlanta and L.A. still have jaw-dropping reward flight availability for late July and into August during the Paris Olympics,” said Gilbert Ott, a spokesman for point.me, a reward travel search engine. “In recent days, I’ve found flights on…