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areas have been built, but still, there are some free spaces, which we have tried
to collect and protect through expropriations funded by the government. And we
also tried to recover important areas in the city of Athens, such as the coastal zone
of Athens.
This is the overall look of the Attica region where Athens is and, if you allow
me to go through these in a fast pace, this is the main Olympic Complex, and
wherever you see a bluish colour is different Olympic venues, for instances the
rowing, equestrian, shooting, the Complex for basketball, baseball, softball and a
number of other sports, another Complex again for basketball, for boxing and the
Olympic Village up to the north. So, you can see that there is dispersion with
respect to the Olympic venues as compared to what Sydney did. Sydney collected
the majority of venues in one specific site and that was good for transport, but,
in my opinion, in the opinion of some of us, that created a lot of congestion, a lot
of pressure in one specific site. So, there is always a trade-off. On the one hand,
dispersion is good, because you avoid congestion of people. On the other hand,
is bad for transport, because you have to organise a very efficient transport network,
and I will speak about transport later on.
Tourism. Tourism is a very important issue in each of the Olympic cities. And
if I go through the different cities, in Los Angeles there were 600,000 tourists in
four weeks, including the period of the Games. In Barcelona, there was smaller
number 170,000 tourists during the Games. In Atlanta, 200,000 tourists, those were
international domestic tourists. In Sydney, there was an estimate of 1.5 million
tourists in four years, including the period of the Games. I do not know exactly
what was the number during the Games. And we expect to have about, let's say
185,000 tourists just for the Games. I am not talking about the tourists who come
to Greece for the islands, for the Acropolis. I am just talking about tourists who
will come to Greece in the potential view to become spectators of the Games.
So, the lessons about tourists are that we are expecting an amount of tourists,
which is about 200,000. We have to accommodate them. The lessons from Sydney
are to use the Olympic Games as a critical touristic gear to help you develop the
touristic policy for the city itself, to link the touristic policy for the country with the
promotion policy for the Olympic Games, to renovate hotels and promote new
constructions, I mean the construction of new hotels, and to develop a specialised
tourism and link it to the Games. For instance, I remember when I was in Sydney
for the Games, there were a lot of excursions planned for the spectators and for
the visitors of Sydney to go to the natural landscape, which exists in the vicinity of
Sydney or far away, in an effort not to keep the visitor just in the city itself, but to
give him the potential or the opportunity to go further away and to do more
things.
And what are the actions in our case? We have decided to construct a major
convention centre in the terminal of the existing airport - of the old airport I mean.
We have given the opportunity for the construction of 28 new hotels in the city of
Athens of high class, of class lux or A, that is five or four stars. We have developed
sport tourism, that is a number of special training camps in the vicinity of Athens
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