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London Summer Olympics 2012: Facts For Travelers
Is it possible to score tickets to the high-profile events? Peter spoke with Sean O’Neill, contributing editor for BudgetTravel.com and recent London transplant, about navigating the process to attend the upcoming Olympics. Peter Greenberg: For those people that want to go to the Olympics, how do you get the tickets to the events you want to attend? Are we back to the lottery system? PG: Just for the sake of getting everybody’s calenders in order, the Olympics don’t start until July 2012. But let’s face it, it’s starting now.
PG: Is that like midnight curling? I mean everybody wants to see track and field and basketball, of course, all the big marquis games. What are they releasing? SO: You can fill out the form and apply. Say you’d love to see the men’s 200-meter freestyle swimming with Michael Phelps coming back trying to prove he is the fastest in the world. You can say, I want to attend that, I want to have the opening ceremonies. Let’s say maybe you’re interested in women’s beach volleyball. If you’re lucky in the draw for each individual event they’ll tell you and take the money out of your credit card. Some people are lucky and some people aren’t. PG: Now, for some people who aren’t lucky, you aren’t necessarily out of luck. I’ve been saying this for years, and correct me if I’m wrong. This happens to any major event whether it’s the Super Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the World Series—all the big sporting events. There’s a great deal of difference between a booked room and a blocked room. What you’re seeing right now, and you saw it here with the Royal Wedding—lots of blocked rooms that never materialized as payed rooms. SO: The International Olympic Committee has reserved 40,000 out of the 120,000 rooms that are available in London. But those are blocked, and as you say, they are going to be released at the last minute.
SO: Absolutely, they try to hoard them until the last minute but it’s a perishable—no good for them once it’s too late. PG: OK, so how much are these tickets? SO: For qualifying events that don’t hand out medals it starts at $32.
PG: Wait, hold it. For qualifying events that don’t hand out medals? What is this, Miss Congeniality?
PG: And going up? SO: And going up. The top-rate one is the opening ceremony and you can pay as much as $3,200. PG: That’s always the big dramatic thing, right? What about closing ceremonies? SO: Even more pricey because everyone likes the fireworks display and the music. PG: Those are the big-ticket items. SO: If you’re willing to pay any price you can go right now to CoSport and get a guaranteed ticket as part of a vacation package. The starting price of those are $4,500 per person for a seven-night hotel stay, which is kind of expensive. And no airfare.
PG: What kind of a hotel?
PG: OK got it. So $4,500, you get the seven nights, and guaranteed ticket to every event you want? SO: You put in your application, but they control the supply of tickets in the U.S. so they are going to be able to get you what you want. PG: If you say so. And what else happens? SO: You can also go to what is essentially legalized scalping. StubHub.com, which is the largest re-seller for things like the NBA and NHL has decided not to do it. But TicketCity.com will. Also the Olympics themselves will be offering last-minute, standing-room-only tickets for events like the 10K marathon through the city and other things. So all the way up to the last minute there will be opportunities if you’re persistent. PG: Something tells me if it’s a 10K marathon running through the city, everybody is standing room only.
PG: So CoSport.com if you want to get in for the next lottery wave or if you want the $4,500 vacation package. Or there’s TicketCity.com and other ticket resellers. And last-minute tickets at the official London Olympic site at www.london2012.com. And last, but not least, you’ve got to get to London. If you try to book even 330 days ahead of time, the computers aren’t set up to give you a discount. You’ll pay through the nose. SO: That’s right, it’ll be the highest price points. PG: My advice is get a cheap airfare to another country and then come over to London on a low-fare carrier. Go to Momondo.com or Mobissimo.com, and get a really low-fare ticket on airlines like Transavia and then come in that way. If you just try to do it a straight ticket to London during the Olympics you will pay through the nose. SO: Absolutely. For example, Aer Lingus flies from New York to Dublin, and then in Dublin you can walk across the terminal and get to Ryanair, bmibaby (bmibaby.com), or several of these other low-cost carriers. That’s one terminal where you don’t have to go all the way cross town to find a connection. By Peter Greenberg for PeterGreenberg.com. Related links on PeterGreenberg.com:
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With Royal Wedding fever safely behind us, London is now gearing up for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. 
SO: Yes, the demand for the tickets are so high, so the first millions of batches of tickets have already been applied for. They will be released in May and June.
PG: It’s not just the Olympic Committee, it’s the advertisers too. What you should do if you’re really bold is to find out who at that organization controls the blocks. Just ask the hotel, who runs your room block? And then email them or call them and say, “Listen, I know it’s very early now, but I just want to get to know you because five days before the Olympics you’re going to have an extra 60 rooms. I’d like you to call me at that point.” That’s also how you get the tickets. The advertisers control a lot of those tickets and next thing you know every once and a while, they’ve got to give them up.
SO: A very decent hotel, like a Holiday Inn, which in the UK is a little bit higher class property than it is in the U.S., in terms of amenities.
SO: Yes, but if you want to have actual in the line of sight of the actual contestants they’ll rope it off.
