Anyone who’s been on Booking.com already knows it: You can’t find a room for the night of the grand final that’s cheaper than £1,000.
In fact, according to MailOnline, Booking.com has said “99 per cent of its accommodation in the city is fully booked, with the few hotels it has left going for up to £2,000.”
Some fans, who booked in the shortlisted host cities more than a month ago, have seen their bookings cancelled and the prices to re-book jacked up.
And some people, who booked to be in Liverpool for reasons unrelated to Eurovision, such as weddings or family reunions, have seen their rooms cancelled because of Eurovision. One woman tweeted that her room, which she’d booked for a wedding, was increasing from £260 to £3,500.
Well now Chris Brown, the boss at Marketing Liverpool, has told the BBC that the city will release other options later this week. While not going into the specifics, he did float some inventive options for those looking for an adventure.
Organisers of Eurovision 2023 have warned visitors not to book accommodation at over-inflated prices during the event.
— BBC North West (@BBCNWT) October 9, 2022
Liverpool Marketing said it is disappointed in those trying to profiteer from the city's winning bid.
Read the latest ?? https://t.co/G2xPR06mYD pic.twitter.com/84KXWxhpCV
“That could involve cruise ships or opportunities around a campsite, but we do have a pretty robust plan,” he told the BBC.
“We have a plan that was a part of the whole bidding process to ensure that we open up a range of accommodation options.”
"We have been working with hoteliers"
— The Guide Liverpool ? (@TheGuideLpool) October 9, 2022
Bill Addy @LpoolBIDcompany talks hotel availability during #Eurovision. pic.twitter.com/85Ksdqpmcn
As is standard with every host city, a number of hotels and rooms have been blocked out for the participating countries and their delegations — and at reasonable rates.
That’s down partly to the fact that every single year, businesses try to profiteer off the tourism boom.
Mr. Brown promises that Eurovision organisers will be “addressing those who we feel are behaving in a way that we would say is not in the spirit or ethos of why Liverpool went into Eurovision.”
Booked and paid for an Airbnb in Liverpool for #Eurovision for the weekend. 12 hours later and the booking has been cancelled and relisted an eye watering 204% increase!
— Peter J Holland ? (@PeterjHolland) October 8, 2022
Cheers guys, you absolute chancers! pic.twitter.com/4c8iZzQqhb
It may get cancelled, we had 4 rooms booked for a wedding in liverpool on the 13th May, suddenly got an amendment on booking telling me my booking is now for the 14th my booking which was £260 is now £3500! https://t.co/fPLpB1XiAZ are now fighting it for us
— Debbie (@debbief135) October 8, 2022
Have you managed to secure anything? What nightmare of a time have you had? Let us know down below!
BULGARIA AND MONTENEGRO UNFORTUNATELY WILL NOT BE ORESENT IN ESC 2023
Let me renmind the pigs of Liverpool about what happened to the pigs of Israel: Eurovision fans saw how pigs the locals are, either hotels or Airbnb and they just didn’t come. Hotels ended up half empty, apartments lowered the prices significantly, and there were barely any tourists. People don’t like pigs.
Airbnb should take serious action against this type of price gouging by hotels. They should remove these properties from their listings if they are cancelling people rooms and relisting them at massively inflated prices.
It looks like Liverpool will be massive failure- local businesses will charge fortune out of Eurovision fans ?
semi final dates are still available.. and I cant wait to get the SF ticket(s).. wish me luck!!!
I was lucky maybe but i found reasonably priced hotel rooms in Turin 3 weeks before Eurovision. I guess Italians are not crazy about Eurovision and there were available rooms (or cancelled?). Plus, Turin has more acomm rooms (they hosted Winter Olympics) than Liverpool. UK is crazy about ESC though and people here are fans and want to live the Eurovision experience (especially after this year’s successful result) so Liverpool will be overcrowded and i am afraid there will not be any good prices for accom even weeks before ESC unless people cancel at the last minute. This whole campsite/cruise… Read more »
Well you don’t need to live in a cruiseship. You’ll just sleep there in the night for a few days 🙂
Manchester is just an hour away by train and has plenty of rooms at normal prices.
Why would people pay for train every time they want to move from their hotel to Liverpool and vice versa? Plus, late nights after the contest or parties… it’s not ideal.
This is pretty horrid of hotels to displace people already booked just to cash in on the contest. have other host cities experienced the same?
Yes, They do it to me in Rotterdam and in Turin. Finnaly I didnt went to Rotterdam but I manage to go to Turin to another hotel with a decent price
In Turin I had no problem with my airbnb. I booked it on October about 100€ per night and it was not cancelled.
Congrats Liverpool for the hosting gig… more specifically the hotel operators lol.
Is it legal to do this?! It’s a shame!
Don’t book! There are going to be talks and deals between government, council, hotels, etc. These inflated prices will go down. I have two spare bedrooms 10 minutes from the arena. I’ll be putting people up for free.
Don’t book *yet*
I lucked out very nicely. Have a booking for me and a good friend of mine at a guest house near Anfield stadium. Booked from thursday till sunday for a total of 186 pounds. Rooting it stays that way but I’m glad Liverpool municipality is taking measures for payable accommodation during eurovision week.
Really nice that Liverpool authorities are finding ways to make fans’ stays more affordable, after the absolutely disgusting behaviour of some of the hosts/hotels. Supply and demand is one thing, but greed is another. There is simply no excuse for cancelling someone’s booking, just to re-list he accommodation at an bloated price.
I’m always wary of things like Airbnb in these situations, at least with a chain hotel you know they would take the bad publicity of cancelling rooms into account. With Turin I didn’t have anything booked at this stage and kept refreshing accommodation sites every week or two and eventually something decent and affordable came up.