A Cold Reality: Athens Is Not a Hot Ticket

[Harry]

By BILL PENNINGTON and ANTHEE CARASSAVA

In the final weeks preceding every recent Olympiad, it has become tradition for there to be a late rush on tickets to the events.

But as the Olympic Games return to their ancestral home in Athens next month, it may take a truly historic run on tickets to keep many events from playing out to nearly empty arenas and stadiums.

Athens organizers say they have sold slightly more than a third of the 5.3 million tickets available for the 2004 Summer Games, which open Aug. 13 and continue until Aug. 29. At this point in the preparation for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, more than half the tickets had been sold - and Sydney was offering more tickets at higher prices. Sydney eventually sold more than 80 percent of its 7.6 million tickets.

Last week in Athens, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, the chief organizer of the 2004 Summer Games, took the unusual step of calling on Greeks to buy unsold tickets to avoid a national embarrassment at the world's biggest athletic event.

"Tickets at fair prices are still available," she said in an interview with Athens radio stations. Angelopoulos called the Olympics, "a once-in-a-lifetime chance for people to experience the Games."

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/20/sports/o...print&position=

Mistakes have been made with the Olympics, but they are not all Greece's fault. The ticketing for the games is absurd. Cartan in the US says that all kinds of events are sold out. Ticketmaster handles tickets for Europeans. Almost all of the games that are sold out according to Cartan are available in Europe. What kind of crap is this? I would consider buying more tickets if they MADE THEM AVAILABLE!

I don't totally blame Greece on the advertising. Who is reponsible for this stuff? I would think it's the Olympic Commitee. What happened there?

I think that tickets will be sold in the end. Greeks like to do things the last minute. The games will pick up steam after the opening ceremony and tickets will move. And of course, we can't forget all of the scary TERRORISTS that want to kill us all. Australia said it's so and so it is. :ph34r:

EDIT: I forgot that the US Dollar sucks vs. the Euro right now.

[Ziaka]

Harry, I have to agree that handling of the ticket sales was not good. Specially for us outside of Europe. It took me several tries to get tickets through Cartan despite the fact that there were claims that tickets were sold out.

Now I think that in the end attendance at the games will be fine. For myself, if I have a chance to get tickets to events I want to see while I am in Athens I will definitively purchase some.

And yes the dollar to Euro conversion does suck. Today I exchanged 1 US dollar for 0.814 Euro :tdown: :tdown: :tdown:

[Harry]

This complements the other article. People are sending me this stuff because they know I am going to the games.

Greece May Miss Out

On Tourism Windfall

From Olympic Games

By KEITH JOHNSON

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

July 21, 2004; Page B1

ATHENS, Greece -- Preparations for the Olympics were flawless, a textbook case of flexible planning to limit costs and maximize returns. City officials, for example, built an elegant neoclassical exhibition center in the shadow of the Parthenon to serve as the site of the Games' fencing competition.

Unfortunately, the year was 1896.

Today, Greece hopes that hosting the 2004 Summer Olympics will jump-start its tourism industry and repay a $7.46 billion investment in the Games. But following a series of marketing and planning blunders, visitor numbers may actually fall by as much as 10% this year. Payback could take 15 years.

Greece's flailing race to finish building Olympic sites in time for the Games is already legendary. And ticket sales have been slow. Organizers won't disclose how many tickets they have sold but assert they have met 85% of their revenue goal. Still, at many events it seems clear thousands of seats will be empty.

But in a blunder with even greater economic consequences, Greece has missed the opportunity to raise its global profile as a travel and tourism destination. "We still haven't put into action the right policy of tourism communications," says George Drakapoulos, president of the Greek Association of Tourism Enterprises.

The typical 11 million annual visitors to Greece could fall by as much as 10%, Mr. Drakapoulos predicts. Government tourism officials concede numbers of visitors will be flat at best, even as Mediterranean rivals such as Spain, Turkey, and Croatia are setting records.

Tourism preparations, like construction work, are down to an 11th-hour scramble. Greece's Tourism Ministry presented a new promotional T-shirt this summer with the slogan, in English, "The Year of Greece." But the shirt isn't linked to an Olympics media blitz: It was created only after the Greek national soccer team unexpectedly triumphed in the European soccer championships in Portugal earlier this month. The ministry recently unveiled its new five-ring Olympic tourism logo -- 38 days before the Aug. 13 opening ceremony.

In contrast, the Australian Tourist Commission snared promotional rights to the Olympic logo five years before the 2000 Summer Games began. Its pitches for Down Under tourism to broadcasters, sponsors and the travel industry went well beyond the appeal of Sydney and the Games.

Mr. Drakapoulos blames Greece's previous government, which was ousted in March elections, for starting big infrastructure projects late and busting budgets. That government "thought hosting the Olympics was publicity enough," Mr. Drakapoulos adds, and it never developed a comprehensive campaign.

Harry Coccossis, head of the Greek National Tourism Organization, a government agency, says he has faith that Greece can use the Olympic spotlight, not to mention the billions of euros in infrastructure improvements, to upgrade its image from a sun-and-sand resort to an upscale cultural-tourism magnet. "The Olympics will be our springboard for tourism development," he says.

Hellenic culture got a boost from an unexpected source: the Brad Pitt movie "Troy," which generated buzz and interest in the country's ancient sites earlier this summer. But it caught Greek Olympics organizers flat-footed. "We wish it had been part of a grand strategy, but it was just coincidental," shrugs Petros Doukas, deputy finance minister. He predicts Greece won't recoup its Olympic investment until at least 2019. "One of the lessons we learned is that venues have to be completed two or three years before the Games, so you can take advantage of them even before the Olympics start," he says.

Only about two-thirds of the Olympic sports venues that Greece has constructed can be readily re-used, officials say. One study recommends simply closing down a $47.3 million badminton center after the last shuttlecock falls. "Figuring out how to reuse these venues is the million-dollar question," says Juan Carlos Peralta, a partner at THR, Barcelona-based tourism consultants that worked on the 1992 Barcelona Games and the 2000 Sydney Games. The Greek Association of Tourism Enterprises hired THR earlier this year.

Cities that have successfully leveraged the Games for tourism built multi-purpose venues. Sports complexes in Barcelona and Sydney, for example, turned into conference and exhibition centers that have since wooed business tourists and helped make the cities meccas of lucrative coat-and-tie tourism.

Of course, even the most-organized Olympics organizers struggle to keep up momentum when the Games are over. A two-year tourism slump followed the Barcelona Games, followed by an economic slowdown. The Sydney Games lifted tourism by only 5% through 2003, officials say. When the host city is in a big country, the tourism boost can be even smaller: The lift was negligible for Los Angeles in 1984 and Atlanta in 1996.

Experts warn that Olympic Games are often haunted by the "avoidance factor," which keeps visitors away for fear of crowds, packed hotels and soaring prices. This year, with terrorism on the list, Athens faces an especially strong dose of avoidance. Meanwhile, as Greece tries to balance a bristling security presence with a visitor-friendly atmosphere, the security budget has ballooned to more than $1.24 billion from initial estimates of about $185 million.

Greece should make the ultimate Olympic host. The marathon will finish in the stone-bleachered downtown stadium that hosted most of the 1896 events. Shot-putters will compete in the ancient arena at Olympia. TV announcers will be jostling to frame shots of the Acropolis over their shoulders.

But some of the Games' costliest venues won't get much exposure. The $287.3 million Faliro Complex, including a massive tae kwon do stadium and beach-volleyball arena, hugs the waterfront in a grimy industrial port south of Athens, where rusted cranes dot the skyline. "The Olympic tourism impact looks like it will be negligible," says Gregory Papanikos, the report's co-author and the director of an Athens think tank, the Athens Institute of Education and Research. He recommends simply closing many of the venues and writing off the investment.

[drakos13]

tickets will sell at the last minute. they expect to sell out everything months before??? there insane. most athenians dont stay in athens during august- somthing these people dont know.

[Makedonia]

Ticket sales will do really well as they get closer to the opening ceremonies. Many people (especially Greeks) will get excited with anticipation and buy tickets. This hopefully can get great numbers. :D

[Harry]

Ticket sales will do really well as they get closer to the opening ceremonies. Many people (especially Greeks) will get excited with anticipation and buy tickets. This hopefully can get great numbers. :D

I had a dream last night. My dream was that I was watching events that were full of people. I think it will come true.