Parisian restaurateurs complain of lack of customers due to Olympics 05:44

Restaurants in central Paris have seen a sharp drop in customers due to barriers set up for the Olympic opening ceremony. Business owners report RIA News.

The city’s central streets, including the banks of the Seine, have been closed off with metal fences for a week. Access to the area is provided by QR codes, and as locals point out, many do not understand how to obtain them. The restrictions were imposed for the unique opening ceremony of the Olympics on the river, scheduled for the evening of July 26.

“We don’t understand what happened. This ceremony will probably be very beautiful, but why did it have to be held on the Seine River and not like in all the other provinces? There are no Parisians anymore, no tourists, no one can cross. We can’t buy food anymore, we have to carry everything ourselves, we can’t order delivery, although we asked for an exception for him, since we can’t go anywhere by car,” said a restaurant owner on the Ile de la Cité Marielle.

The cafe is empty at lunchtime, when it is often difficult to find an empty table in Paris.

He added that even our regular visitors cannot come and tourists do not know how to come here.

“This is a real disaster,” Mariel said.

The owner of a Reno restaurant also expressed his dissatisfaction with the decrease in profits due to the Olympics. He said the restaurant was usually full of people but now there was no one.

According to him, there are significantly fewer tourists. He believes that this is due to several factors: everything has become more expensive because of the games, many people, even some police officers, do not understand QR codes.

According to him, due to the influx of visitors, authorities promised businessmen a “holiday” but in the end the city centre remained empty.

The media previously wrote about this in Paris to go past Protests against the 2024 Olympics.