Expensive hotels may deprive the Aussies from live action of Rugby World Cup
Aussies are not showing great enthusiasm towards Rugby World Cup due to expensive hotels. With just five months remaining in the Rugby World Cup and only 1500 people have bought the packages so far. The Rugby World Cup is kicking off later this year in September
in New Zealand.
The ticket sales were very sluggish in Australia due to expenses hotels, accepted the travel agents. The travel brokers said that they were booking the deals since last year and observed clear deficiency in the want tickets. They told the reporters that
inflated rates of tickets and hotels have decreased the purchasing power of rugby fans and comparatively less people are interested to travel to New Zealand.
Mike Jones, general manager of Total Sports Travel, one of the tournament's official travel agents briefed the reporters about the current situation of Rugby World Cup ticket sales. Jones said that there was a great enthusiasm among the rugby fans during
last year but huge increase in hotel rates has poured cold water on them.
Jones added, “We've been selling for about 18 months and we're probably halfway. What we've sold in 18 months, we've got to do another half in six months.”
Jones also said that devastating floods in Queensland and fatal quake of Christchurch has also an impact on lazy ticket sales.
He said that large number of people lost their properties and crops in Queensland during this year’s floods that cost the large number of rugby supporters with huge financial losses. He asserted that floods had changed the priority of the mass and they even
can’t imagine travelling to New Zealand.
The other major reason of expenses hotels, he declared, was that of 22nd February’s destructive tremor that turned turtle to the city of Christchurch. The huge tremor deprived the second largest city of New Zealand from all its allocated RWC matches.
Five matches including two quarter finals were scheduled to be played there, but later on all fixtures were shifted to other venues. The quake also created a shortage of hotels in New Zealand that resulted in price hike ultimately.
Jones explained, “Australians like to think of New Zealand as a cheap destination and usually it is but, as is usually the case in these situations, the prices of hotels are well up and the prices of tickets are up too. Trying to explain all this to people
is really difficult.”
At the same time Jones was hopeful that if Australians derbies perform well in the ongoing Super Rugby championship it could pump up the ticket sales. Recently top Australian derby Reds has been placed on overall fourth position at the points’ tables.
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