On September 5, Japan congress convention bureau (JCCB) convened “MICE seminar hosted by JCCB industry department” at Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO)’s conference room. Ryuta Matsunaga of Tokyo Bureau of Sports lectured about their approach to “Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics”. About 60 people from the affiliate companies and organizations have attended the seminar.
Before the opening of the meeting, Chikanami, CEO and chairman of Industry Department, greeted with a message, “Olympics and Paralymics gave me hope and courage. In the year 2020, I would like to invite the games to Tokyo by all means, and let children feel the heat of contending to be the number one in the world.
Also, Kuniko Inoguchi, Chairwoman of JCCB who was absent from the seminar, had sent a message over, “Bidding for Olympics and paralympics leads to a higher level of Japanese MICE. I want JCCB members to work together and give us the support to achieve this.”
Currently, Tokyo is working on bidding the 2020 Olympic games which is the first time in 56 years, since the last time was in 1964. On May 23 this year, Tokyo was already selected a candidate city for the Olympics by IOC execs in Quebec, along with Istanbul and Madrid.
As the reason for Tokyo to have achieved the highest evaluation out of the 3 cities, Matsunaga stated that it was due to the clear motivation and vision of the convention, and also due to strong financial base.
On the other hand, public opinion research showed that the domestic approval rating was as low as 47%, which is the biggest agenda towards the bidding, and to solve it he explained that spreading news of economic ripple effect and having events that would bring excitement over.
In plans for operating, the concept for layouts of sites were decided as “The games taking place in the center of the city still developing”, and was divided into Heritage Zone and Tokyo Bay Zone.
The National Kasumigaoka Stadium which becomes a main stadium is a Heritage zone, the Media Center will be the Tokyo Big Site at the Tokyo bay area, the Olympic athletes’ village will be at the Harumi area which is the center of 2 zones.
This time, the cost of the bid is assumed at ¥ 7.5 Billion which is approximately half of the bid for the 2016 tournament. Additionally, the operating budget for a successful bid costs ¥ 180 Billion, Facility development budget is seen at ¥ 280 billion.
Mr. Matsunaga responds to our interview after the lecture “The proposed theme for Tokyo is Compact. The established permanent venue, the Yume-no-shima (island of dreams) pool, Ariake north gymnasium, about 2 gymnasiums for Yume-no-shima. Aside from the Media Center at the Tokyo Big Site, there are competitions held such as wrestling and fencing and is expected to be utilized like the Excel exhibition center at the London Olympics. I talked about the need for expansion of the regarding the plan for the venue.”