The European Tour Operators Association has issued a follow-up report to one it published two years ago, furthering its initial findings that the Olympic Games hurt rather than help tourism in the host country.

The new report shows that tourism in Greece, which hosted the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, has been lagging behind fellow Eastern Mediterranean countries Turkey and Croatia. It also reveals that visitors to Australia declined for three years in a row following the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, during which time tourism in New Zealand grew consistently.

The follow-up report comes one month before the 2008 Summer Olympic Games will be in full swing in Beijing, and there are early indicators that China will suffer the same fate as its Olympic host nation predecessors.

The ETOA cited findings that less than two months before the start of the Beijing Olympics fewer than 50% of four-star and fewer than 80% of five-star hotel rooms in Beijing had been booked.

The report comes just as London, where the ETOA is based, is readying to host the 2012 Summer Olympics.

VisitBritain, Britain's national tourism agency, claims that the London Games could generate about $4 billion for Britain's international visitor economy. "The majority of this economic benefit will not come during the six weeks of the Games themselves but in the window of opportunity that will be created before and after the Olympics, and two-thirds of the revenue is forecast to be generated in the post-Games years 2013-2017," VisitBritain said in an official statement.

While the ETOA report does not address the London Games specifically, ETOA Executive Director Tom Jenkins did express concern about how the Olympics is falsely marketed as a potentially huge boost to tourism, when according to the organization's data, it's the opposite. (Read more from Jenkins, In the Hot Seat this week.)

"Our persistent concern is to ensure that unnecessary damage and disruption does not take place within the tourism industry," said Jenkins. "One of the chief problems caused by the Olympic Games is the enormous disparity between expectation and reality. People often seem to have a wildly exaggerated hope for material gain from hosting the Games. And those hopes tend to be placed in the tourism industry. And in truth, there's very little gain."

The ETOA report was released last week, just a few days before Britain's House of Commons' Culture, Media and Sport Committee issued a tourism report defending VisitBritain's need for funding in the lead-up to the 2012 Games.

According to the report, VisitBritain's annual funding for 2008-2009 was dropped to $94.6 million, compared with $98.5 million for 2007-2008. And the funding is expected to be decreased to $89.7 million for 2009-2010 and to $80.8 million for 2010-2011.

"While recognizing the tightness of this year's public expenditure settlement, we find it extraordinary that ministers took the decision to concentrate all of the pain on the department's funding for tourism," the Culture, Media and Sport Committee report, released July 10, stated. "Indeed, we believe that there was a strong case for increasing the resources available to VisitBritain given the evidence of the economic benefits that can result and the unique opportunity provided by the forthcoming 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games. The decision to cut resources is simply baffling and should be reconsidered."