Ships To House Games Visitors
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday October 4, 1994
A flotilla of at least 20 cruise ships will be anchored in Sydney Harbour in 2000 to fill an accommodation shortage for the Olympics, the Australian Hotels Association has revealed.
The novel plan aimed to prevent the development disaster which had left Barcelona a "city full of empty hotel rooms" in the wake of the 1992 Olympic Games, the association's NSW accommodation chairman, Mr Wolfgang Grimm, said.
A similar disaster could befall Sydney if developers failed to accurately predict hotel demand beyond the Games.
Speaking to the Herald at the 32nd International Hotels Association (IHA)congress, Mr Grimm said the hotel industry must address urgent issues arising from a technological boom era and environmental sensitivities. Smoking was a big issue, with hoteliers widely refusing to yield to government and public pressure to ban smoking in public spaces. They would look instead to technology, pinpointing an extraction device to be released within a year that would make smoke impossible to detect from three metres.
The conference comes as the Australian Tourist Commission predicts an extra 2.1 million visitors will arrive in Australia between 1994 and 2004.
The IHA's chairman of the economic committee, Professor Michael Olsen, warned about a short-sighted boom-bust mentality: "The pressure to develop leads to a tendency to over-develop."
© 1994 Sydney Morning Herald
