Last month the four-star Radisson New Providence Wharf Hotel, three miles from the Olympic Park, was showing the cheapest rate of £594, for a double or twin room, for the Games period.
But similar rooms are now available during the Olympics for between £210 and £306.
Industry experts hope say the price cuts will attract an increased number of visitors.
It is thought these are more likely to come from the rest of the UK and northern European countries. than the US and Asia, as the short-notice makes it harder for them to plan a holiday in London in time.
Seamus Maccormaic, a senior director with Hotels.com, one of the country’s leading hotel booking sites, said: “We predict that we will now see an increase in the number of domestic visitors to London during the Games period, especially those who have managed to get tickets.
“They will be taking advantage of the fall in room rates to book one or two night stays, allowing them to attend the Games and also spend some time in London.
"Others will just want to be in the capital, perhaps go to the Olympic Park with day tickets and soak up the fantastic atmosphere there will be over the Games period.”
As part of the bid to stage the 2012 Games, Locog had reached agreements with hotels to provide it with more than 40,000 rooms, representing more than 600,000 room nights during the period.
Part of the deal was that the organising committee promised to return any unwanted rooms back to the hotels so they could sell them in time for games.
The rooms, at more than 200 hotels, range from five-star to budget accommodation.
At the same time hoteliers have begun to offer discount rates in an attempt to encourage people put off by what is the high cost of accommodation in London compared to previous years.
Mr Maccormaic added: “A lot of hotels, small, medium and large, have held back until now in the hope of attracting visitors at premium rates. But they are now starting to put rooms onto the market at much lower rates because they found they just could not fill them. That means there are some fantastic bargains to be had at the moment.”
Studies have shown that an estimated 294,000 tourists were likely to visit London from overseas during the Games period, with a further 587,000 day overnight visitors from the rest of the UK.
On top of that it was estimated that around 5.5 million day trippers would descend on London during the two weeks of the Olympics and 12 days of the Paralympic Games.
The Oxford Economics think-tank had forecast that £650 million in tourist spending was likely to be generated during the five year period after the Games.
But there had been fears the high price of hotel rooms would put many thousands of visitors off coming to London during the games.
Martine Ainsworth-Wells, director of marketing communications, London & Partners, the former London Tourist Board, which said its own estimates matched Hotel. Com’s figures, welcomed the price cuts, saying it would boost visitor numbers to the capital.
He said: “We’ve known for years that business patterns do change during an Olympic year due to the nature of hotel rooms being allocated to sponsors and media first – the people who contribute hugely to the cost of the games and then released at a later date.
“With LOCOG’s recent releases, hotels can now manage their remaining availability and ensure that visitors coming to London throughout 2012 will have a positive and enjoyable experience which will make them want to return for future years to come.
"With over 100,000 hotel rooms in the capital, we have always been confident that there would be plenty of room for everyone.
“The beauty of London is that it’s a shot hop away from some of its core markets in Europe and that makes late bookings entirely possible for visitors that want to come to the capital this summer.”
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
Pets can become casualties of divorce - Las Vegas Review Journal
Divorce has upended cruelly the lives of Sam and Sophia.
Not their own divorces, of course. Rather, it's the divorces of their owners that have landed Sam, a friendly but wary 3-year-old mixed-breed dog, and Sophia, an elegant 10-year-old tortie-point Siamese cat, into the Nevada SPCA shelter, 4800 W. Dewey Drive.
Sam, an otherwise friendly little guy who's a bit skittish about meeting strangers - reach out to pat his head and he reflexively pulls back - was brought to the shelter by his owner, who cited a divorce as the reason for giving him up, said Doug Duke, executive director of the Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Sophia, whose regal manner and striking markings make her stand out among other residents of her room at the shelter, also was brought in by her owner, who, Duke said, cited a "separation" as the reason.
As unwitting victims of their owners' marital difficulties, Sam and Sophia aren't alone. Each week, Southern Nevada shelters and animal rescue organizations receive dogs, cats and pets of every sort who, by virtue of their owners' impending marital breakups, lose their homes, too.
Granted, it doesn't usually come to this for the pets of divorcing couples. However, Duke said divorce is the sixth most-common reason - after foreclosures, the death of pet owners and problems stemming from financial reversals and hardships - that pet owners voluntarily surrender their pets to the Nevada SPCA shelter.
On any given day, at least one pet whose road to the shelter began with an owner's divorce will go up for adoption, he said.
Andy Bischel, development director for The Animal Foundation, which operates the Lied Animal Shelter, 655 N. Mojave Road, said about 50,000 animals come into the shelter every year and that, in 2010 and again in 2011, about 45 impounded animals annually were brought there for the specifically cited reason of an owner's divorce.
However, the numbers represent only instances in which owners specifically cite divorce as the reason for surrendering their pet. It wouldn't include, for example, cases in which an owner substitutes another, perhaps less personal, reason for turning in a pet, impounded strays who become strays because of an owner's divorce and pets for which no specific reason for impoundment or surrender is cited. It also doesn't include pets who were abandoned and found in homes and yards who might have been abandoned because their owners split up or pets who simply become collateral damage in a couple's disintegrating relationship.
There's really no way of knowing precisely how many pets are abandoned because of divorce, Duke said, "but we suspect a lot of other turn-ins we get are when owners start fighting and have marital problems."
Yet, Bischel added, "you can't pass judgment on people who come in, because they're actually doing the right thing," because, at a shelter, the pets at least have a shot at finding a new home.
Southern Nevada animal rescue organizations also regularly see pets whose divorcing, or divorced, owners choose to give them up.
"We've had quite a few owner surrenders where there's been a divorce situation and one spouse didn't want to take the dog and the other couldn't keep the dog, or both of them couldn't keep the dog," said Cynthia Cartwright, fundraising and event coordinator for Las Vegas Labrador Rescue.
Some spouses end up leaving Southern Nevada after a divorce and can't take a pet with them, she said. Or, divorcing spouses may have to downsize and move into smaller rental homes or apartments, "and a lot of these places won't take pets over 20 pounds.
"So we have rescued and placed quite a few Labs from divorce situations. Most of the time, they don't want to get rid of the dog and usually call us because they don't want to take the dog to a shelter because they're afraid of what may happen. They know we're no-kill, so we're going to keep them and find them a home."
That doesn't necessarily make the process less heartbreaking.
Once, Cartwright said, "we went to pick up (a Labrador) from the house (the husband and wife) were moving out of, and the husband was just really emotional. When we put her in the back of my car, he put his arms around her and was hugging her. He got all choked up because he didn't want to give her up, but he was moving into an apartment and didn't know what to do."
If there is an upside, it's that most divorcing pet owners give up a pet only for reasons of benign, if sad, practicality.
"The interesting thing is, when people talk about this, you expect people to be, in a lot of cases, fighting over the animal, and they do," Duke said. "But we see many cases where Mom and Dad split up and one of them is, maybe, leaving town and they're overwhelmed, or they both have to downsize their living situation."
But there are instances in which a family pet becomes caught in the middle of a domestic power struggle. Debbie Pietro, president of Golden Retriever Rescue Southern Nevada recalled a case in which a wife surrendered the family's golden retriever to the organization while her husband was away on a trip.
But, she said, it turned out that "they were fighting badly and ready to divorce."
As it routinely does, the organization - which Pietro said typically sees between 10 and 20 divorce-related surrenders a year - had the dog neutered and prepared for adoption to a new home, on the basis of the paperwork signed by the wife.
But, Pietro said, "he came home from wherever he was and he walked in and said, 'I want my dog back.' He was swearing, 'How dare you neuter my dog.' "
It was, she added, "the worst case we've seen."
"It's absolutely heartbreaking when the animal is used as a pawn, and somebody would be mad at a spouse and turn the animal in to the shelter," Duke said. "We have people who come in and say, 'I never expected my wife or husband to do this.' The problem is, they did, and our interest here is the best interests of the animal."
Under Nevada law, pets are - no matter how much we might think otherwise - property. So, in a divorce proceeding, a pet is, from a strict legal standpoint, not very different from a house, a car or a jewelry collection.
But divorce-related disputes about the family pet aren't necessarily about the pet.
"People who are determined to fight about something will find something to fight about, whether it's the kids or, if there are no kids, the microwave oven or, if that's not available, Fluffy," Las Vegas family law attorney Marshal Willick said. "If you're fixated on the concept of fighting about something, that 'something' may make little difference."
"I've seen every conceivable iteration of people-animal interactions. If you could imagine people being kind, cruel, possessive, jealous, angry, it all plays out."
Willick once saw a case in which a woman "was willing to trade off pretty much everything in order to take the dog and go," and "cases where the animal gets caught in the crossfire."
"Luckily, I have not had a case - although I've read about them - where somebody has done something to the animal just to hurt the other party," he said.
Willick noted that the traditional legal notion that pets are property seems to be changing, both by legislation and by case law. Increasingly, he said, living creatures are being treated more as individuals rather than as chattel.
"But it's an evolution," he said.
By virtue of their long-term relationships with both animal patients and human clients, veterinarians routinely witness the ways divorce affects pets and their owners.
"It's a regular part of life and a regular part of being a veterinarian," said Dr. Christopher Yach of West Flamingo Animal Hospital, 5445 W. Flamingo Road.
Fortunately, said Dr. Ann Bradley of The Ark Animal Clinic, 1651 N. Rancho Drive, most divorcing pet owners work together and do what's best for their pets.
Usually, one spouse will assume primary custody of the family pet and become its primary caregiver, she said. Often, that will be the spouse who, informally, already had assumed most of the family's pet care responsibilities even before the divorce.
Yach said some divorcing couples arrange for pet visits, just as they would for children, and care for the pet on occasions when the one spouse is out of town.
A few couples even decide to continue to share in the costs of caring for the pet after the divorce. Yach said he has clients who have remarried but still show up for most of the pet exams together with the one pet they had together and make decisions with each other, even though one of them is the primary caregiver.
Although it doesn't seem terribly romantic, thinking about such what-ifs when a couple adopts a puppy, a kitten or another pet may make things easier later on if the relationship doesn't last. Like most things, Duke said, it comes down to that marital communication.
"My best guess is a lot of these decisions on abandonment are made very emotionally and very quickly and on impulse," he said. "Not every case. We have people who come in here who have given lot of thought to what they have to do. But others come in and they're already angry the moment they walk in the lobby."
Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.
Source: www.lvrj.com
Divorce lawyers turn to social media to turn up the goods on cheating spouses - Detroit Free Press
The Wall Street Journal's blog Smart Money reported that although that founder Mark Zuckerberg recently took the leap into marriage, Facebook itself is prompting many divorces around the world, and justices are getting wise, and using evidence on FB during divorce hearings.
More than a third of divorce filings in the United Kingdom last year contained the word "Facebook," according to a survey by Divorce Online, a UK-based legal services firm.
And more than 80% of U.S. divorce attorneys say they've seen a rise in the number of cases using social networking, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.
Gary Traystman, a divorce attorney in New London, Conn., told Smart Money that of the 15 cases he handles per year where computer history, texts and e-mails are admitted as evidence, 60% exclusively involve Facebook.
"Affairs happen with a lightning speed on Facebook," says K. Jason Krafsky, who authored the book "Facebook and Your Marriage" (Turn the Tide, $19.95) with his wife Kelli.
In the real world, he says, office romances and out-of-town trysts can take months or even years to develop. "On Facebook," he says, "they happen in just a few clicks."
The social network is different from most social networks or dating sites in that it reconnects old flames as well as allows people to "friend" someone they may have only met once in passing.
"It puts temptation in the path of people who would never in a million years risk having an affair," he says.
Even when extramarital affairs develop with no help from Facebook, experts say the site provides a deceptively comfortable forum for people to let off steam about their lives.
"The difference with Facebook is it feels safe, innocent and private," says Randy Kessler, an Atlanta, Ga.-based lawyer and current chair of the family law section of the American Bar Association. "People put an enormous amount of incriminating stuff out there voluntarily." It could be something as innocuous as a check-in at a restaurant, he says, or a photograph posted online.
Courts also are increasingly examining Facebook for evidence, the blog reported.
Last year, a judge in Connecticut ordered a divorcing couple to hand over their Facebook passwords to the other's lawyers.
Source: www.freep.com
Ecuadorian Ambassador leaves London for talks on Julian Assange's bid for political asylum - The Independent
The Photography Blog: The rise and fall of the camera club
Recently, I visited a well established local camera club to drum up support for a community photogra...
Source: www.independent.co.uk
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