Posts

paris

2024 Olympic Games Brought Tourism To Paris, But Some Business Owners Reported Their Worst Summer Yet 

/in , /by

Businesses and hotels in Paris were expecting a major rise in profits this summer with the 2024 Olympic Games and influx of tourists, athletes, journalists, and more in the city. 

However, now that both the Olympics and Paralympic Games are over, many individuals throughout the Paris service industry stating they’ve had their worst summers ever due to security restrictions throughout the city during the Games, according to the Associated Press.

Embed from Getty Images

Tom Denaive is a Paris resident who runs a jewelry store between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde where many Olympic events were hosted. For him, this was a great hindrance to his business as the city closed multiple metro trains around the area, and many pedestrian and commercial routes were also blocked. 

“It was a dead street, I felt like we were back to the COVID days,” Denaive said to AP. 

The Louvre Museum also reported a 22% drop in visits during the Olympic Games, as well as a 45% drop during the two weeks prior to the Games starting. 

“I have all the records from last year and we didn’t match a single one,’’ said Marina Orlando, store manager at French luxury candle brand Diptyque. 

“We were given a whole serenade about the Olympics, that it was going to be incredible. … Some of us didn’t go on vacation, it was a huge logistical effort so that we could all be present on D-Day. In the end, the store was largely empty of customers,” she said. 

The Paris government released data that showed there were around 1.7 million international visitors to the city during the Olympic Game period. Those numbers are up 13% when compared to tourist rates from last year. 

Embed from Getty Images

“I think that our country’s bet has paid off,” said. Olivia Grégoire, who leads the ministry charged with companies, tourism and consumption. 

Grégoire said “France as a whole was on track to maintain — and potentially surpass — last year’s record-breaking tourism numbers.”

Denaive said tourists “spent so much on hotels, flights, tickets … they didn’t have much of a budget left for shopping.”

Instead of building an Olympic park outside of the center of the city, Paris chose to host the Games in the heart of the capital, which made it difficult for visitors to get to various shops or restaurants. 

An increase in police and security presence and checkpoints also added another layer of difficulty. Only individuals with a specific QR code could pass certain police checkpoints, making it essentially impossible for regular people to commute throughout the city unless they took the metro. 

In June, the Parisian government announced that it would be creating a commission for businesses that were negatively affected by the Games. The commission will handle, and ideally fulfill, compensation requests from businesses located in areas where security measures were put in place. The commission will begin assessing those requests in January.

Plastic Hotel Toiletries

Major Hotel Chains Are Getting Rid Of Single-Use Plastic Toiletries

/in , /by

It’s difficult to comprehend how large of an issue climate change actually is. It can be even more difficult to figure out ways in which we can combat it. Especially now, when so much extensive damage has already been done to our planet, its wildlife, and the many ecosystems within it, it’s hard to tell how we can fix something that’s practically shattered. Systematic change is the main goal but until then, on an individual level, we all can reduce our plastic use and carbon footprint, and most of us do. Now we need the larger corporations, who are actually contributing the most to global warming, to step up to the plate. 

The hotel industry is not typically the first thing that comes to mind when we think of systems that can make a change to reverse the damage that’s been done to our planet. However, Accor Hotels, a global chain that owns 40 different hotel brands such as Fairmont and Ibis, has made a commitment to eliminate all travel-size toiletries from its rooms. 

Embed from Getty Images

The initiative is a part of Accor’s much larger environmental campaign in which they’re aiming to get rid of all single-use plastic items in their properties. Think about it, unless completely unused, those mini bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body-wash, soap, shaving cream, etc. needs to be replaced every time a new guest checks into a particular room. In Accor’s official statement they claimed they’d be removing all of these products from their 5,000 properties; of which there are over 340,000 guest rooms which equates to over 1 million bottles of toiletries being used on a given day.  

“Accor is replacing the plastic toiletries with either wall dispensers or glass, bulk-sized toiletries by the end of the year. The chain is also replacing a number of common hotel items usually made from plastic, including key-cards, laundry bags and cups, with materials made from relevant alternatives,” according to Accor’s statement.

Accor claimed that before this, their company would use more than 200 million single-use plastic products annually, a staggering number that even they were surprised by. They also predict all of their hotel properties will be fully transitioned by 2022, but they’ve already begun implementing the newer and more sustainable options. 

Embed from Getty Images

Ibis Hotels have locations all across the globe, and they made their own statement claiming that thanks to Accor’s new policy they’ve already switched from single-use plastic toiletries to reusable soap dispenser mechanisms in over 2,000 of their locations, and that’s just one of Accor’s 40 different branches. 

Additionally, Accor claims that most of their hotels have already eliminated plastic straws and drink stirrers; the only remaining locations who have yet to do so are in China but they’re on track to do so by the end of March 2020. China itself recently announced that the entire country is planning to ban all single-use plastic by 2025, hence the delay in Accor’s hotels as they need to wait for the government policies to go into effect more than anything.

Accor is not the only hotel conglomerate that understands the impending doom climate change has created. Holiday Inn, Marriott, Hyatt, and Hilton Hotels are some of the biggest hotel chains on the planet, and they all announced similar initiatives to Accor within the past year.

Marriott announced their plan to get rid of all of their plastic toiletries by December 2020, and are expecting to reduce their overall plastic use by 30%. Hilton and Hyatt Hotel locations will also be seeing a similar change, as both chains made announcements that they’d be replacing single-use toiletries with bulk-sized items. Hyatt also announced that bottled water would only ever be available upon special request, as a means of encouraging guests to bring their own reusable water bottle. 

These initiatives are a major systematic step in the right direction. We just need our world leaders to follow Accor and China’s lead in helping our planet recover what’s been lost. Banning single-use plastic won’t fix it all, it most likely won’t even come close, but it’s definitely a start.