October 10th - Eurovision comes to Merseyside
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2022
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Liverpool has beaten Glasgow to be the host city of 2023's Eurovision song contest. Ukraine memorably won 2022's competition and while they would have had several fantastic locations, the war with Russia has meant that Britain have been asked to host this year. Many will be happy to see Liverpool, where some would say modern music emerged from, has won the right to host but already prices for accommodation have skyrocketed and alternatives may need to be sought out as the rest of Europe descends upon the city.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. |
| 0:06.3 | And today I want to talk about Eurovision, that wonderful annual competition of song. |
| 0:13.9 | Of course, you will know that Ukraine won in 2022, which would normally give them the right to host the 2020 |
| 0:21.1 | competition. And it was hoped that it would be Odessa, the most spectacular |
| 0:28.2 | Black Sea city that would be the host city. But the authorities have said that |
| 0:35.0 | because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the continuing |
| 0:38.8 | conflict that's probably not going to work and therefore they looked at second |
| 0:42.6 | place and for once that was the UK and said right you can hold this in Ukraine's |
| 0:48.6 | honour or rather you're you're hosting it for them so a great opportunity and the names were whittled down to Liverpool and Glasgow. |
| 0:58.8 | And it was revealed at the weekend that Glasgow would take the second place and Liverpool would be the winner. |
| 1:08.9 | So obviously great upset for Glasgow, but very, very exciting for Merseyside. |
| 1:17.2 | Now, the problem is, if you look at a story that my colleague Lucy Thackeray has written for the Independent, |
| 1:24.6 | well, prices have gone through the roof, with room rates rising above |
| 1:29.4 | £5,000 a night. And even something pretty rudimentary, a shared house, is going to cost you |
| 1:37.2 | many hundreds of pounds. That's for the night of the 13th of May. And people are saying it is an outrage. |
| 1:46.0 | Well, I'm saying it's a bit of an outrage if people booked very shrewdly before the final city was announced, |
| 1:53.0 | and they are now finding that the hosts have cancelled those bookings and they can only rebook at a much higher rate. I too would be furious |
| 2:03.3 | with that. But I'm not too worried about the fact that the market has worked like this. Of course |
| 2:10.9 | it does if you've got a sudden spike in demand. Everything is programmed to put the prices up and see what the market will bear. |
| 2:20.8 | Pretty much any travel business is in the market for. |
| 2:25.2 | Selling everything it possibly can of its capacity, of course, hotel rooms like airline seats, |
| 2:30.2 | very perishable at the most it can get. And if the demand is there, the prices will just keep rising and rising. |
... |
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