Continuing from the last instalment, we will explore the issues that arose in the build-up to the World Cup and how the organisational firm, PwC, helped to solve them to ensure a smooth running of the tournament.
For a start, Brazil had to choose 12 cities out of 18 contenders, where matches were to be staged. Each city had to be interviewed in terms of the plans they had for the event and their capabilities. Once the selection process was completed, PwC checked out the infrastructure these towns had in place against the plans they had proposed and produced an implementation guide.
The exhaustive process exposed many potential worries - one being the limits of Brazil's airports. Around 20, 000 fans would try to fly to the next event within hours of one game ending. However, most terminals at regional airports only had the capacity to process about 1,200 passengers every hour - huge delays would be expected.
PwC put forward a plan for increasing capacity at terminals and boosting the number of flights - upgrades as such would expect to cost (US$ 3.6bn). The scale of the problem is magnified when considering that the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report ranks Brazil's airport infrastructure 134th of 144 nations in terms of quality. BIG improvement was needed.
The second major concern was a shortage of hotel rooms. Tens of thousands of ticket holders as well as their families were in demand for hotels. This is no problem at all for cities like Sao Paulo, but it is for smaller towns. A bigger problem still, was trying to convince private investors that extra hotel capacity could be kept full even after the event had ended. As you can see from this instalment, there are many obstacles that need to be overcome to ensure the running of a successful event. In the next issue, we shall explore more issues and the ways in which Brazil can look to rectify the problems, all to ensure a smooth running of the biggest stage in the world.
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