More than three weeks before the Opening Ceremony of the Athens Games the city will start the biggest security operation in Olympic history by sweeping venues for bombs. Standard Sports reveals that army and police chiefs will start looking for explosives at all the venues from July 19, 25 days before the Opening Ceremony on August 13. Once a venue is “clean” it will be “locked down” and protected by armed guards until the end of the Games.
Greece’s Public Minister announced Monday that a new traffic management system will control and ease traffic flow in Athens during the Games. The system will employ 208 ordinary cameras and 75 special cameras that will link up to two traffic management centres, which will respond to the build up of traffic by intervening at traffic lights or by dispatching traffic police to the area. The pilot phase of the system starts June 17 and will be fully operational by August 5. When fully operational it will gather information from sensors deployed in all areas of Athens about the number and speed of cars. The information will be processed by a central computer that will be able to provide a real-time update on traffic conditions throughout the city and alert all the necessary authorities on the situation.
Hotel owners denied comments by the head of the Greek National Tourism Organization (GNTO) Monday that despite a sizeable drop in tourists this year, Greek hoteliers have hiked their prices by an average of 70-80 per cent ahead of the Summer Games. Hotel owners blamed the increases on the failure of Athens 2004 organizers to get the private home rental program goings, and on greedy foreign travel agencies. GNTO chairman Haris Kokkossis said that most increases in hotel prices ranged from 50-100 per cent though in certain cases the sums involved were seven or eight times higher than last year’s. He urged hoteliers to show restraint, adding that under free market regulations there was little scope for intervention. He pointed out that the connection between the Olympic Games and Greek tourism was not sufficiently advertised internationally, and now efforts for a supplementary advertising campaign are being made at the ”thirteenth hour”.
