NBC will bring a much smaller contingent of guests to Athens than it has to other Olympics, while staging separate VIP viewing parties in Bermuda during the Games for corporate guests.
Media buyers who've bought advertising in the Games said they've been told that most of the trips their clients will receive will be to Bermuda, not Athens. One media buyer said he was told by NBC representatives that the network has cut its on-site hospitality by two-thirds for Athens, compared with previous Games.
NBC spokesman Kevin Sullivan said the network expects to bring roughly the same number of guests to Athens and Bermuda, describing it as a "50/50" split. He would not say how the size of the overall contingent would compare with previous Games.
The network decided to split the hospitality between Greece and Bermuda because of logistical and security concerns, said numerous people who have been briefed on NBC's plans.
Sullivan would not comment on any matters relating to security, or how that played into the decision to send about half the network's guests to Bermuda. He said the decision to split up the hospitality was driven by a desire to offer more options.
"Whatever experience people want to have, whether it's the middle of the action in Athens or a different kind of experience in Bermuda, watching the Games from there, they can make their choice," Sullivan said.
With Athens being much farther away than Salt Lake City, and not the sort of comfortable destination that Sydney represented, network officials thought that some executives would rather go to Bermuda than attend the Games in Athens. Flight time from New York is about 10 hours to Athens and about two hours to Bermuda.
The Bermuda excursion will include opportunities to watch the Games on television, along with golf and other outdoor activities.
Sullivan compared it to CBS' hospitality program during the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998. CBS offered guests a choice between going to Nagano or attending viewing parties in Aspen, Colo. The network expected 300 to 400 people to choose Aspen but ended up hosting 880, said Jan Katzoff, president of Sportsmark, the hospitality company hired by CBS. A thousand or so went to Nagano, Katzoff said.
Hospitality packages are built into Olympic advertising deals. For Salt Lake City, advertisers received one three-day trip (for two people) for every $7 million spent on media. NBC brings other guests to the Games at its discretion and will host a large number of General Electric corporate clients from Europe.
The cost of these trips can range from about $5,000 a couple to $12,000, plus airfare, said Katzoff, who estimated that NBC's trips fall toward the high end of that range.
Although travel distance is one reason NBC decided to stage hospitality in Bermuda, concern over security was also a factor, a former NBC executive said.
He said that 2½ years ago, while he was still with NBC, the network was briefed by security experts who said the terrorist group November 17 represented a major threat to all U.S. citizens. At that time, NBC began considering other options, such as Bermuda, the former executive said.
Since then, the Greek government has taken measures to break up November 17, and the Athens Organizing Committee has taken unprecedented steps to beef up security.
All guests of Olympic sponsors and broadcasters will receive motorcade-like escorts from their hotels to events, said Katzoff, whose company is running Athens hospitality for Olympic sponsors Visa and Xerox, and the hotels will be protected around the clock by security provided by the Greek government.
Experts said that concerns over safety make it a sensible decision to limit the size of NBC's hospitality presence in Athens.
"Some of the logistics for a very large group may be difficult," said Charlie Besser, CEO of Intersport, a Chicago-based company that will bring several hundred corporate guests to Athens. "I can understand why they would split the group because there will be some challenges they did not face in Salt Lake or Sydney."
Several media buyers and advertisers said trips to the Games are far more desirable than going to Bermuda. One noted that in some cases, company policies that ban junkets won't allow executives to go to a viewing party in Bermuda. Trips to the actual Games, conversely, involve real work for some executives. For example, advertisers that wish to include images from the Games as they unfold in advertising campaigns must get approval from the International Olympic Committee, and that's best secured in person.
In the end, Bermuda in the summer is nice, several advertisers said, but it's not the once-in-a-lifetime experience of attending the Olympics.
"Because we do so little hospitality when the Games are offshore, we would prefer to have access to the Olympics for those who want to go," said Dockery Clark, executive vice president of Olympic and event marketing at Bank of America, a sponsor of the U.S. Olympic team and advertiser on NBC's Olympic broadcasts. "There are lots of trips offered to executives at the CEO level. They could probably go to Bermuda on their own. To me, the greatest experiential event is the Olympics."
She said Bank of America has a multiple Games advertising deal with NBC but has not yet received detailed information about the hospitality program.
Terry Dillman, manager of Olympic marketing for Xerox, sees it another way. "I think it's a good idea if you have certain customers who couldn't go [to Athens] anyway. We've often said it would be fun to do something like that for the Winter Olympics, like going to Hawaii."
The Athens Games take place next year from Aug. 13-29.
