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Olympic bosses to cut £10m hotel bill for 2012
Matthew Beard, Evening Standard28.04.08
Olympics chiefs were today forced to scale down a £10million plan to offer five-star hotel accommodation to hundreds of VIPs during the London Games.
Top hotels in the West End have been block-booked for visiting senior officials and bosses of the London organising committee, Locog, are to pay half the bill.
Rooms earmarked for foreign dignitaries included 345 presidential suites at up to £3,000 per night, offered at a 50 per cent discount.
In the biggest block-booking seen by the London hotel industry, 2012 chiefs reserved 1,925 rooms in Park Lane, including the whole of the Dorchester and suites at the Hilton, Metropolitan, Grosvenor House, Four Seasons and Intercontinental.
The offer of six five-star hotels is generous by Games standards. In Beijing, officials will have two such hotels with the remainder in more modest accommodation.
There were calls for Locog to invest its £5million subsidy of VIP accommodation on nurturing Olympic talent instead. Today it said it might not take up a quarter of the rooms and the first to be cancelled would be the presidential suites.
The selection of hotels appeared in the "candidate file" submitted ahead of the 2005 vote on the 2012 host city. Accommodation is for the IOC entourage as well as heads of international sports federations and national Olympic committees.
Under the £10million deal with the IOC, Locog guaranteed officials " presidential suites" at £1,500 a night, smaller ones at £330 as well as £150 standard rooms.
The difference between these rates and their real price in 2012 is estimated to be £5million and will be met by Locog's privately financed budget. Locog said the subsidy was to guard against profiteering by leading hotels.
Mid-range hotels would be urged to commit to maximum prices for non-VIPs but Locog would not make up the difference for those rooms.
The £5million, Locog said, was a small proportion of its £2billion budget which is raised from sponsorship, ticket sales, merchandising and broadcast deals.
A spokesman said block-booking was sensible, adding: "With four years to go it is not possible to say exactly how many rooms will be needed. Many may not be needed and we are confident they could be cancelled at no cost to us."
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