The Olympic doom everyone predicted never came to Paris
The city is bidding good riddance to prophets of Olympic gloom and price-gouging Airbnb-ers.
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Bloomberg Economics reckons French economic growth will pick up in the third quarter.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Lionel Laurent
For the better part of a year, a lot of Parisians have been planning for the Olympics – not to attend them, but to escape them. Fear of an unliveable city packed with tourists and deprived of basic goods has been matched with greed at the prospect of charging those same tourists insane sums for accommodation on Airbnb. Overtourism, price gouging and harsh policing would surely make Paris hell.
Luckily for those of us still here, nothing has turned out as expected, rather like the bedbugs meme that went viral but bore little relation to reality.