Bank Of America Hometown Hopefuls Center

When the Todd family attended the 2004 Athens Olympics to see rower Patrick Todd compete, they spent nine consecutive days at Bank of America’s Hometown Hopefuls Center. It became their home away from home.

So the first thing the Todd family did after touching down in Beijing yesterday was drop off their things at the hotel and head to the newly opened Hometown Hopefuls Center in Beijing, where they expect to be for at least 10 out of the next 13 days.

“Sometimes, it’s a great reprieve from the hubbub and trying to communicate with people,” said Maureen Todd, 57, of Cincinnati. “It’s great to see the other families and relax.”

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The Todds — Molly Todd, 25, Taylor Todd, 29, and Dick Todd, 59 — were some of the first hundred or so visitors to Bank of America’s Hometown Hopefuls Center, which opened Friday. The center was dedicated Saturday afternoon in Beijing at a ceremony attended by former President George Bush and U.S. Olympic Committee CMO Rick Burton.

Before cutting a ribbon to formally open the center, Bush said, “It’s a good thing when you’re far away to have a place where you feel welcome, and that’s what the bank’s provided.”

This year’s center is located in a two-story-tall restaurant and club called the China Lounge that’s adjacent to Beijing Workers’ Stadium, site of some of the Games’ soccer matches. The center offers athletes, their families and bank guests a place to rest, eat, drink and watch events during the Games.

The hospitality center is expected to host more than 6,000 registered guests over the 16 remaining days of the Olympics. The family center offers guests complimentary lunch and dinner service; wide-screen TVs to watch events; an Internet café with laptops provided by Lenovo; massages from two masseuses; and a concierge service from the Hilton Family of Hotels.

The facility can feed 600 people per meal, and the bank estimates that a family of four can save as much as $1,700 per week by dining at the facility, which is significant for families that have traveled from the U.S. to cut costs while they watch their sons and daughters compete.

The bank is one of the few U.S. Olympic Committee sponsors to have a presence in Beijing. It hopes the hospitality center helps build word-of-mouth buzz back home, and to add potential new customers or expand existing customers’ banking services, said Craig Auerbach, who oversees the bank’s Olympic sponsorship.

“We’re not pushing a hard sell, but certainly if someone is interested we are able to answer questions and refer them back to how they can sign up with the bank when they get home,” Auerbach said.

The bank set up a small service desk on the second floor of the center that was managed by Daylon Phillips, a bank branch manager from San Bernadino, Calif. He signed 10 new customers to the bank’s U.S. Olympic Team banking program in the first hour the facility was opened. The program gives customers a Team USA card that benefits U.S. Olympic athletes with every purchase.

The facility comes with two decks that look out over Workers’ Stadium and can feed more than 170 guests. The bank plans to do satellite interviews with athletes like softball pitcher Jennie Finch, swimmer Cullen Jones and sprinter Lauryn Williams off the deck during the Games.

‘America’s Cheer’ Program Exceeds Expectations

The Hometown Hopefuls Center decks also feature three signed posters from the bank’s “America’s Cheer” program, which launched in April. The program, which is being featured in a commercial during the Games, encouraged people to videotape or write cheers for Team USA and upload them to a Web site.

To date, the bank has collected 20,000 written cheers and 5,000 videos, which has translated into “millions” of views of cheers, Auerbach said. He expects the number of cheers and the visits to the Web site to increase over the next two weeks.

“(The traffic and participation is) north of what we expected at this stage of the program,” he said. “We’re pretty close to passing our goals, so I’m confident we’ll pass them in the coming days.”

SportsMark Running BofA Center

The facility is being run by SportsMark, a hospitality agency out of San Francisco, and is being staffed by some 30 students from Beijing University.

The bank had three bronze statues designed by sculptor Toby Linwood that sit in the windows of the first floor of the facility. The statues show images of a gymnast, a runner and a diver. The statue of the diver shows it plunging into a Bank of America logo. It likely will be brought back to the U.S.