Hotel rooms have already been booked for Taiwan’s badminton and shooting representatives at next year’s Tokyo Olympics, as the venues for those competitions are not close to the Olympic Village, the Sports Administration said last week.
It has also made reservations at hotels to be used as midway stations, so athletes could focus on preparing for competition, it said.
The decision to book the rooms was made after agency officials and representatives from the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee and National Sports Training Center went to Tokyo last month to check the Olympic venues and scout for locations for midway stations, Competitive Athletics Division head Hung Chih-chang (洪志昌) said at the agency’s weekly news conference.
The Olympic village is to open to athletes on July 14 next year, the same day that athletes can begin practicing at Games venues, Hung said.
The badminton venue is about a 50-minute drive from the Olympic village, while the shooting venue is about an hour away, he said.
The delegation booked six single rooms and seven double rooms at a hotel that is about a 10-minute drive from the badminton venue, and five single rooms and five double rooms at a hotel about a 30-minute drive from the shooting venue, Hung added.
The reservations were made by Wednesday with assistance from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan, which negotiated with hoteliers on the agency’s behalf, Hung said.
The Sports Administration chose a bed and breakfast called Matsu Temple, which is owned by a Taiwanese expatriate and managed by a professional Japanese team, and other hotels, Hung said.
The bed and breakfast is being renovated, with work scheduled to be completed by February next year, he said, adding that the agency plans to reserve all of its rooms while the Olympics are on.
The agency spent about NT$9 million (US$291,196) booking rooms on July 23 to Aug. 10, because the hotels required bookings to be for the entire Olympic period, Hung said, adding that costs for the bed and breakfast were not included in that amount.
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