(ATR) Leading hoteliers have thrown their support behind the Hungarian Olympic bid.
Members of the Hungarian Hotel & Restaurant Association (HHRA), representing 144 hotels and chains in the Balaton Corridor region, backed the bid at a meeting this week along with various small hotels and commercial accommodation providers.They promised to supply a total of 8,799 hotel rooms for a Budapest Olympics.
Gusztáv Bienerth, vice chairman of Budapest 2024 and government tourism commissioner, said the region’s "proven capability" of staging major sports events, coupled with the robustness of the bidding concept "has led to this overwhelming support from hoteliers in the Veszprem and Balaton area".
Hotel and restaurant association leader István Kovács said the strengthening of Budapest 2024’s accommodation plan resulted from ongoing discussions with the bid committee over the past month.
"The fact that a large proportion of the hoteliers in the area are interested in committing their room stock to Budapest 2024 signifies their experience as hosts to both tourists and world-class athletes, and also that they recognise the good business sense of the proposal," he said.
Lake Balaton, Europe’s largest freshwater lake, and the city of Balatonfüred are among the region’s top tourist attractions with a history of hosting sporting events. Earlier this year, it hosted the FINA 10km Marathon Swimming World Cup and Sailing 420 and 470 Junior European Championships. This will be followed by the Sailing Laser Europa Cup in September and the 2017 ISAF Dinghy World Championships.
Under Budapest’s 2024 bid plan, Balatonfüred and Lake Balaton would stage four Olympic sports – sailing, golf, aquatics (marathon swimming) and handball preliminaries.
Los Angeles, Paris and Rome are the other candidate cities vying to stage the 2024 Olympics.
All four bids have sent delegations to Lausanne this week for IOC workshops focused on phase two of the bidding process – Governance, Legal and Venue Funding.
Reported by Mark Bisson
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