By David Browne eTN London

A shock report has cast doubt on the value of the Olympic Games for tourism. It says cities that have put on the Olympics in recent years have suffered a slump in tourism and the recovery was no better than in comparable destinations that had not been involved in the event.

The report says there is no long-term boost to tourism, as has been widely asserted. It concludes that there is little evidence of any benefit to tourism from hosting an Olympic Games, and considerable evidence of damage.

The report was released by the European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) as part of the debate into plans for the 2012 Olympics in London. “The Olympic Games do not turn tourists into sports fans or sports fans into tourists,” said Tom Jenkins, ETOA executive director. “The presence of the Olympics deters tourists; they perceive that the city will be full, disrupted, congested and over-priced. A reduction in the numbers of regular tourists halts the conveyor belt of satisfied customers bringing more visitors.”

The report’s findings are hotly contested by VisitBritain, which predicts that the 2012 Olympics will attract additional visitors and add at least £2 billion in tourist revenues to London.

In the case of the Sydney Olympics, a trend of over ten percent in visitor arrivals to Australia turned into a decline two years before the 2000 Games, and the stagnation persisted for more than two years after. A similar Olympic effect was also apparent for four out of the last five Olympic Games.

The ETOA’s findings are at odds with a number of other studies that proclaim the tourist benefits of hosting the Olympics. They indicate that in Barcelona, which held the Olympics in 1992, longer-term tourist growth following the Games had been outstripped by other comparable European destinations over the same period, such as Prague and Dublin. The ETOA claims that previous studies on the tourism benefits were based on aggregated forward-looking opinion rather than on objective facts and figures.

“These findings may seem surprising because during the Games the city’s hotels are full. But this situation is short-lived. Olympic visitors tend not to be big consumers of sightseeing excursions; neither are they committed visitors to museums, historic monuments and other classic tourist attractions,” said Jenkins.  “London is a great tourist city. Action must be taken to ensure its continued growth is not disrupted by the Olympics.”

The ETOA is calling for a national marketing campaign to smooth out a post-Olympic dip, which it says is inevitable. It says initiatives and marketing in the years running up to 2012 should be directed at counteracting fears London will be full, over-priced or ‘otherwise engaged.’

A spokeswoman for VisitBritain said London will not be full in 2012, and that while 40,000 beds in 3-star hotels have been earmarked for the Olympics, another 60,000 would still be available for normal tourists. “We have a lot of experience of hosting international sporting events. In 2002 when Manchester hosted the Commonwealth Games there were 590,000 visitors, compared with 550,000 in 2001. And in 2003 the visitor numbers went up again to 750,000.”

A journalist from Spanish newspaper El Pais also challenged the ETOA’s assessment of the Barcelona impact. He said tourism had really taken off in the city as a result of the 1992 Olympics because they brought world attention and a vast improvement in infrastructure and regeneration that was of lasting effect.

On the same day that the report on the Olympics was unveiled, the online travel agent lastminute.com reported a 35 percent hike in late bookings from British people who had returned from Germany after England’s defeat in the World Cup soccer tournament. The company explained the boost as the result of soccer fans looking for an additional holiday destination after taking time off work to travel to watch England through to the final. But with the England defeat in the semi-finals, they had no interest in staying in Germany for the remainder of their holiday.