LOCOG hands back 20% of room nights to hotels

The body in charge of organising the London 2012 Olympics is to hand around 20% of the room nights it had reserved for the games back to hotels for them to offer up to other customers.

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic & Paralympic Games (LOCOG) made agreements with the hotels to provide more than 40,000 rooms, representing more than 600,000 room nights during the games, as part of London's original bid.

LOCOG chief executive Paul Deighton said: "The hotel industry in London got behind the bid to stage the games in the most extraordinary way and that support helped us across the line.

"We always promised that we would not hold on to hotel rooms we didn't need but return them to the individual hotels at the beginning of 2012.

"We are now doing this and I hope that this enables the hotels to continue with their planning for this summer as we all work together to stage a spectacular games."

VisitBritain chief executive Sandie Dawe said: "We welcome the announcement by Locog that they will be releasing around 20% of the hotel rooms that they have held in advance of the games taking place.

"The fact that such a wide spread of rooms in London will now be made available to the public is great news for overseas visitors wishing to come to the UK to experience the Olympics and all the other wonderful festivities that are taking place over the summer."

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