Budapest’s 2024 Olympic Bid this week opened an interactive Visitors’ Centre designed to showcase the Hungarian Capital’s plans to host the Games.
The complex is housed on a 700-square-metre barge on the River Danube, the waterway that will form an “Olympic Blue lane” to take athletes and officials between the venues – something organizers hope will diminish traffic headaches common during the Olympic Games. Tourists will arrive at the venue by boat.
The centre was officially opened by Mayor István Tarlós, Chairman of the Budapest 2024 Bid Balázs Fürjes and Chair of the Budapest Athletes’ Commission, Agnés Kovács.
Admission to the centre, which is located in a tourist spot across from the Parliament Building, will be free of charge. Organizers expect that 10,000 visitors will tour the two 200 square metre pavilions before the International Olympic Committee (IOC) elects a 2024 host city in Lima, Peru next September.
One pavilion showcases the FINA World Swimming Championships set to be staged in a new aquatics facility in Budapest in July 2017 – while the second explains the creativity and confidence of the Budapest Bid.
Bid Chairman Balázs Fürjes said “The FINA Championships are really important to us, not just because Hungary is strong in swimming, but because we are also strong in hosting international sporting events.
“It shows our ability to deliver a world-class sporting venue on time and under budget, especially as we stepped in after Mexico’s withdrawal.”
The presentation of the Budapest Aquatic Centre will include a virtual reality tour using VR headsets, and visitors can also play a specially created watersport game that is similar in design to Fussball.
Budapest is competing with Los Angeles, Paris and Rome to host the 2024 Olympic Games.
