Japanese Firms Harden Hearts On Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games: 56% tell Survey off 11,000 ‘Postpone Again Or Cancel’
More than half of Japanese firms want the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and Paralympics postponed or cancelled, a survey by think tank Tokyo Shoko Research found this month.
More than 11,000 firms, some under considerable financial pressure because of the coronavirus pandemic, were asked in the first week of February how they felt about the delayed 2020 Games going ahead this July and the Paralympics after that. Games.
The survey results coincided with a powerful earthquake in Fukushima less than six weeks before the Olympic torch relay was due to begin in a prefecture that suffered a catastrophic nuclear disaster a decade ago.
A concerning 56 per cent of firms in the latest Japanese survey reflecting deep skepticism about the Games going ahead, felt that further postponement or cancellation was the correct response to the global pandemic and its knock-on financial impact.
The result represented a rise fo 2.4 per cent on the number who thought the same back in August last year around the time the 2020 Games would have been ending had COVID-19 not got in the way.
Of the firm’s asked, only 7.7 per cent believe the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games could go ahead as planned and in transitional form, with crowds and all the things that come with hosting the Olympics. That marked a huge drop from the 22.5 per cent of firms who felt the same last year.
Reflecting the specific and exclusive nature of Olympic sponsorship and partnership, almost three quarters of all firms stated that any postponement or cancellation of the Olympic Games would have little impact on their revenues.
One tier up on what the Games might look like, almost a fifth of all firms believed the Games should go ahead with restrictions on crowd numbers, while 17 per cent felt that there should be no spectators at all.
Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games organisers and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) are due to make a decision on the fate of the Tokyo event next month.
Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games – Thoughts Of People & Travel Firms
Lat month, a Kyodo News survey last month found 80 per cent of Japanese people want the Games to be cancelled or postponed, 35 per cent of those calling for the cancellation of the Games, 45 per cent for further postponement, something the IOC and organisers appear to have ruled on, on grounds of costs and logistics.
So far, Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Organisers and the IOC had maintained that the showcase will go on – just as they did last year until that proved to be impossible. Vaccine programs have offered more hope this time round, although the global rate of take-up may not make it feasible to cover the universal needs of all who attend a Games, athletes the star attractions but many others essential to being able to stage an Olympics.
Organisers have suggested that the Games could go ahead without an insistence on proof of vaccine. That, however, swims against the tide of opinion in the travel industry, airlines among those minded on making proof of vaccine obligatory. While some nations are pressing ahead with vaccination programs, others have barely started and many will not do so until late spring. That could have an impact on the universal nature of the Games if the Olympics goes ahead.