VANCOUVER, British Columbia—Problems finding accommodation for thousands of media personnel expected to cover the 2010 Winter Olympics are nearly resolved, organizers saidThursday as they hosted an International Olympic Committee delegation.
The IOC officials said they were pleased with the progress made by the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) in preparing both venues and marketing for the event on Canada's Pacific Coast.
Local organizers also said they have agreed to a request by the IOC to add the ski cross event to the list of competitions to be held in 2010 .
VANOC expects its board will vote next week on a long-awaited business plan that includes an agreement over how much of the worldwide broadcast revenue the IOC will share the local organizers.
Although billed as the Vancouver Olympics, many of the ski events at the 2010 Games will be held about 120 km (75 miles) away in the resort community of Whistler, British Columbia, where a shortage of accommodations for the media had threatened to turn into an embarrassment.
"We have broken the back of that problem," VANOC Chief Executive John Furlong told a news conference that wrapped up a three-day visit by the IOC panel.
VANOC had run into difficulty securing enough hotel rooms, because many of the rooms are owned by individual investors around the world who had to be contacted and asked to make the spaces available during the Games .
A staff official said 1,300 rooms have been secured over the past four months in Whistler, which is about 80 percent of what is needed in the community.
Much of the media at the 2010 Games will be housed in Vancouver, where the opening and closing ceremonies will be held, along with most the the skating events.
The IOC officials said they were not worried by a series of small protests in Vancouver in recent weeks, including an incident in which an Olympic flag was stolen just as the visiting panel was arriving.
"Canada is a free country. You cannot expect 100 percent of the people to support the Olympics, and if some people are making protests that is liberty," said Rene Fasel, president of the visiting panel.
A group advocating for low-income residents has organized some of the protests, saying that buildings now used by the poor were being converted by landlords hoping to make more money from a Games -spurred construction boom.
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