REPORTING. "Here, there is only football" : in Marseille, enthusiasm is still timid before welcoming the Olympic flame in May
The Olympic flame will arrive on May 8 in Marseille, on the Old Port. 100 days before the start of the Olympic Games, franceinfo took the pulse of the Marseille city, which will host the Olympic sailing events but also certain football matches. The Olympic flame will arrive after 12 days of crossing aboard the Belem, a three-masted boat from Greece. Nearly 150,000 people are expected to admire this free spectacle, which raises high expectations for the city’s traders and hoteliers. But in Marseille, the population’s enthusiasm still remains relative.
However, hosting the Olympic flame is a boon for hoteliers. Nicolas Guyot, who is also vice-president of Umih [Union des métiers de l’industrie hôtelière] in Bouches-du-Rhône, even had its hotel in the Old Port extended for the occasion. “The Old Port is complete for this period. This shines through all Marseille hotels, and perhaps even beyond. It is an honor for us to receive the flame. Marseille will be a media showcase, the whole world will know Marseille if he didn’t already know it”he hopes, while hoping that Marseille tourism will benefit from it for several years.
But if the city is full for the arrival of the flame, this is not yet the case for the Olympics this summer. Reservations are currently timid, just like in Paris. “We are below reservations compared to other years, because of the Olympics. It’s like in London or Tokyo, we noticed a phenomenon of eviction, explains Nicolas Guyot. People say it will be too expensive and that the quality of service will be poor, while the city of Marseille cannot accommodate more tourists than there is infrastructure to do so.”
There is still time to convince tourists but the Games are worrying, with security fears in the background. “We are worried about all the crowd movements and terrorist threats. We will cross our fingers and be positive”supports Florence, a trader near the Old Port. “It’s going to be complicated. I hope it goes well because Marseille only deserves positive things”continues Christophe, another trader from the Phocaean city.
Enthusiasm is in any case difficult to be felt in Marseille, in a city which is not used to vibrating for the Olympics but for its Olympic team, OM. “We don’t care about the Olympic Games in Marseille. Here, only football matters”decides a Marseillaise, while the Marseille club hosts Benfica Lisbon on Thursday April 18 evening, in the quarter-final return leg of the Europa League.
