Escaping the Olympics crowds: travel trends from Paris to the world

24.07.2024 - 08:21 / breakingtravelnews.com / Paris Olympics / Carlos Cendra

Paris is expected to welcome 11.3 million visitors during the Olympic Games, significantly increasing its population density. This surge in visitors is spurring travel demand to international destinations, such as Italy and the United States, that harness this desire to leave crowds behind, also benefiting United Kingdom, Spain, and Greece, as well as farther destinations, such as Thailand or Japan.

Paris will be one of the summer travel hotspots in 2024 due to the Olympic Games 2024, an event that is boosting travel demand to international destinations from Paris airports, growing close to 12% on average compared to the same weeks last year. This is the key takeaway of “Escaping the Olympics crowds: travel trends from Paris to the world”, a report conducted by the global travel intelligence platform, Mabrian, and The Data Appeal Company (part of Almawave Group), focused on the international destinations that will benefit from this demand surge coming from the French capital.

To unveil trends on travel demand during the three-week period analysed (between July 22nd and August 12th, 2024, when the main Olympic event will take place), a cross-analysis* was carried out. The resulting insight combines air demand, based on flights searches and air capacity (seats in one-way direct flights, for three months in advance searches, up to July 16th, 2024), with cyclical summer demand trends.

As Carlos Cendra, Partner and Director of Marketing and Communications at Mabrian, points out: “Italy and the United States will be the most benefited countries by this demand surge, facilitated by the combination of increased seats availability from and to Paris, thanks to the Olympic Games, and the demand growth to travel abroad from Paris this year”.

During the Olympics, air capacity from Paris to the United States increases over +9% when compared to the same period in 2023, and destinations such as New York, Los Angeles or Miami see a strong demand increase during the games’ weeks; similar to Italian cities such as Milan, Rome, and Venice.

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Olympics crowds, in figures
In a year when Paris expects, according to recent forecasts from the French government, 11.3 million visitors only during the Olympic Games 2024 (26 July to 11 August), and another 4 million during the Paralympic Games 2024 (28 August to 8 September), domestic and international travel alternatives grow, to leave behind a city that might multiply by five its population density.

To dimension the impact of the expected number of visitors to the French capital city, and according to the Statistics Board of France (Insee), around 2.1 million people populate Ville de Paris, the centre of the Île-de-France region, known as Paris Region, where 12.4