Although Athens is contracted to secure 19,000 rooms for “Olympic Family” visitors (athletes, federation, officials, judges, sponsors and accredited media), the Athens-based Olympian Press Agency (OPA) reports that Athens organizers had booked 12,800 rooms by May 2001, and have found an additional 3,200 rooms since then. Now they must book the remaining 3,000 rooms in little more than three months to be on schedule.
ATHOC accommodation manager Spyros Pappas said, “the deal isn’t legally binding. No memorandum with a union or chamber can bind its members to business decisions. We must afterwards contact each hotel separately for a signature”.
ATHOC hopes that there will be more hotels built as the 2004 Games draw nearer. “Our final allocation plan will be drawn up in spring 2002. By that stage we will know what the situation with new hotel construction is”, says Pappas.
ATHOC is not contractually obliged to provide accommodation for the thousands of spectators (and volunteers) coming to the Games.
The development ministry has just begun looking into the prospect of lodging visitors in private houses. Pappas said, “the number of private houses needed is always linked to a city’s total accommodation inventory”. He said that Sydney had 45,000 hotel rooms and the Olympic Family took up about 52 per cent of those and so private housing played a small role. In Athens almost 95 per cent of hotel inventory is needed just to cater to the Olympic Family, making the provisions of private housing all the more important.
Renovation of university dormitories, orphanages, summer camps and school campuses are expected to provide ATHOC with additional rooms to house Olympic officials, such as referees.
