Olympic officials snub Games hotels
‘They should stay here and take train’
Published: September 15, 2011
by RICHARD OSLEY
OFFICIALS and sponsors who have booked accommodation around Park Lane for next year’s Olympic Games have been told they should have been put up in King’s Cross and travelled to Stratford by train like everybody else.
Instead, they will largely be staying in upmarket hotels to the west of the city – including the five-star Dorchester – and are set to make their way to the action through the capital’s busy streets.
Euston Road and Southampton Way are among areas in Camden that will be partly sectioned off to make room for official Olympic traffic during the Games and regular users of those roads were reminded this week that they should plan now for the disruption that will be caused.
London Assembly member Murad Qureshi said the volume of cars heading across town could have been reduced if organisers had used hotels around King’s Cross including the new St Pancras Grand.
He said: “I don’t think it’s too much to ask that IOC [International Olympic Committee] officials and their sponsors stay near good transport links to the main Olympic site rather than where they will cause most inconvenience to Londoners.”
Mr Qureshi said that sponsors and officials could easily have taken the dedicated Javelin train service between St Pancras International and Stratford.
Shadow Olympics minister Tessa Jowell – a former Camden councillor – told the House of Commons on Tuesday that there was a risk of people resenting a “two-tier” traffic system that was being set up in London with the “Games Lanes” for designated Olympic traffic.
The system has already been severely criticised by Conservative London Assembly member for Barnet and Camden Brian Coleman, who said: “The exclusive Olympic lanes on Euston Road and Southampton Row are only being created because the international media is staying in swanky Bloomsbury hotels.”