|
Quite a number of visiting countries established hospitality domains for visitors, athletes and officials to provide a home feel for those visitors.
Many set-up in city locations including South Africa who set-up at the Rainforest Café in Darling harbour where they extended on the existing jungle theme.
The French club at the Billich Gallery in the Rocks had a lounge area at street level where visitors and officials watched the French coverage of the Games while downstairs the Accor group catered buffet style (with French wines) for French visitors.
Japan had an exclusive club at the Australian Maritime Museum.
The Greeks set-up a publicly accessible display in Nick’s Restaurant at Cockle Bay to promote Athens 2004 and Greek Olympic Committee spent a lot of money on entertaining at the MCA.
The Holland Heineken House
However the most popular venue with visitors and locals alike was the Holland Heineken House situated in a 3,000 m2 marquee at the rear of the Australian Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour. In fact the venue was so popular that toward the end of the Olympic period organisers had to ship in extra supplies of Heineken beer from New Zealand.
Event Producer of the Holland Heineken House was Henri van der Aat, who is attending his seventh Olympics. He represented Holland in sailing at the Moscow Olympics and then coached the Dutch team in ‘84 and ‘88.
In 1992 van der Aat established Trefpunt Sports and Leisure Marketing and initiated the idea to give all Dutch athletes, officials, sponsors and supporters at the Olympic Games in Barcelona a place to meet and relax. The Netherlands Olympic Committee and Heineken adopted the idea and the Holland Heineken House was born. The venture is operated in partnership with the Netherlands Olympic Committee and Heineken and was also very popular in Atlanta.
Henri van der Aat came to Sydney in 1997 to find a suitable venue and to negotiate with local suppliers. Set-up of the venue commenced two weeks before the opening of the Games. The double story marquee was shipped out from Holland and apart from the main hall capable of accommodating 3,500 visitors it also includes management offices, meeting rooms and studios for Dutch media including three TV networks. The Dutch national newspaper is available for patrons before it hits the stands in Holland.
Large video screens in the venue showed the Dutch TV coverage. The venue also took six feeds from SOBO so that they could show whatever sports the Dutch were competing in. Dutch Internet sites with updates on the Games were available for visitors.
All athletes, particularly Dutch, were welcomed to the club and the place absolutely went off when swimmers Pieter van den Hoogenband and Inge de Bruijn visited.
Apart from the marquee, the venue extended via an open-air restaurant on the nearby wharf to include the Batavia, on board which corporate dinners were staged. And just to let Sydney know they were in town, they scared the shit out of anyone nearby when they fired the Batavia’s guns on a regular basis.
One of the most popular, and visible, souvenirs from the venue were the Heineken bottle tops with a blinking red light, which were seen all over Sydney.
150 Dutch nationals staffed the venue supported by 40 Australian staff from Mode Catering and Benson Security while Chameleon supplied the lighting through Visual Event Management
Henri van der Aat is already planning for Salt Lake City and Athens.
Trefpunt Sports & Leisure Marketing
Heineken |
