Olympics give tourism to London a lasting boost

Hosting the Olympics a year ago was far more expensive than was necessary, or originally budgeted for. Tessa Jowell claimed it would cost £2.4 billion but it ended up nearly quadruple the amount at £8.8 billion.

However, it does seem to have produced some long-term benefit from tourism. This was not just during the games but is evidently more lasting.

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson says:

I am very pleased to announce in a final rebuttal to some of the gloomadon poppers and some of the naysayers, the tourism figures for last year and for the first quarter of 2013. i.e. the first post-Olympic tourism figures that we have seen, really do knock spots off previous Olympic experience in other Olympic cities.

We have seen 3.4 million visitors come to London in the first three months of this year, a 4.2% increase on the same period last year, so I pay tribute to London & Partners and to everybody involved in that exercise and to everybody who takes part in our tourism industry.

Of course it wasn't just the money. There was the pride and enjoyment. There is still the question of whether we could have had all that, just as much revenue for tourism and so on, but managed to deliver the Games for rather less than £8.8 billion.