“Are you going to the Olympics?”
It’s one of the first questions I have been asked recently when networking or socialising. Everyone wants to be at this ‘once in a lifetime’ experience. But, with ticket prices starting at £30 and going through £65, £95, £105 and beyond, it’s not the cheapest of days out.
The effect of the London Olympics on UK small businesses
Now bear in mind that a lot of people have bought several tickets for a large number of events and it’s not hard to work out that an awful lot of disposable income is being spent on London 2012 rather than home improvements or holidays in the rest of the UK.
Following on from my post about the effects of the Jubilee and England being in Euro 2012 on UK hotels – events which take people to London or their own back garden and a bbq – it would seem that the Olympics is also destined to be less of a ‘nice little earner’ for the majority of small business owners than was originally predicted.
So, after one client commented on the lack of phone calls to his hotel – something that was reflected consistently amongst his fellow proprietors, I received another email from one of my best customers reporting a downturn in sales enquiries.
The site itself was showing improved rankings for its chosen keywords so the opportunities for exposure were increasing. Investigations of Analytics showed that, whilst traffic in the previous three months was consistent with that of the three months before and also with the same three month period the previous year, the number of people coming to the site in the last month had fallen by about 8%.
Could it be just a coincidence that his target market is located in and around London and the Home Counties where the Olympic Torch has been doing the rounds and where a large proportion of the Olympic audience will be based?
A selection of potential customers who would
