The Prince of Darkness Ozzy Osbourne closes the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham
(Picture: PA Wire)What a show Birmingham put on last night at the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games. Even Ozzy Osbourne’s brief appearance struck the right note.
It came almost exactly 10 years since London was basking in similar glory at the end of the 2012 Olympics. How long ago that seems now.
London has probably had a respectable summer for tourism after two complete Covid duds. But just how respectable it is impossible to know thanks to the Office for National Statistics, which has still not seen fit to start pumping out its foreign visitor data again — well over a year after the end of the last big lockdown.
InterContinental’s owner IHG provided an interesting insight today when it said revenue per available room — the key indicator for hoteliers — is 10% below 2019 levels in London, but 1% above in the provinces.
It says business travel remains depressed and high-spending Asian visitors are still thin on the ground largely due to China’s continuing struggle with Covid.
London’s efforts to win back visitors — foreign or domestic — has not been helped by chaos at the airports, strikes on the railways and Tubes, rising crime, and the weeping sore of Brexit.
City Hall’s promotion efforts have also been pretty underwhelming, perhaps because the Mayor’s energies have understandably been more focused on saving TfL.
Even so, London tourism chiefs must be wondering how badly things have gone wrong when England’s long derided second city seems, however fleetingly, a more appealing place to visit than its capital.
