Children of the Internet, Rio and Hong Kong

by Rob Kothe, Sail-World.com on 14 Apr 2016 I have four daughters, the youngest, who in her mid 20's is a true child of the Internet.

The kind of conversations I have with her run along these lines.... In the olden days we did not have television until I left school (your grandparents did not want me distracted from study) and they had a thing called print magazines, that reported events between two weeks and four months after they happened.

And her sceptical response... Hoh! Daddy, Hoh!

She is right, is anyone really going to read about the Olympics some time down the track when they can be in Rio with an online team.

At the Qingdao and Weymouth venues Sail-World had the largest reporting team.

For Rio 2016 Sail-World will once again have a major presence with six sailing journalists from around the world contributing to our daily newsletters. The Sail-World/ YachtsandYachting.com team which will be headed up by Richard Gladwell and Rob Kothe.

Over the course of August the sister publications will send out around two million newsletters and our combined traffic will be distinctly out there.

For us Rio 2016 is coming up fast and there is a lot happening on the Olympic scene, the usual suspects have figured at the 470 and 49er/FX European´s and it you have to think that in at least three of the classes, 49ers, Finns and 470 Mens, the story of the Rio regatta will be if Burling and Tuke, Giles Scott and Belcher and Ryan don't win.

Interesting to see the affect the Internet is having on the Games. In Sydney, Athens, Qingdao accommodation for international visitors was in reality hotels, with media coralled into buses and soldiers with automatic rifles.

The 'talk it up' from the local media about giant crowds and traffic congestion meant that the regular British holiday crowd stayed away from Weymouth, the popular holiday destination and there were cheap empty rooms at the local pubs, walking distance from the venue.

Now in 2016, it's AirBnB Rio who is your friend. With ticket sales at about half the levels of London 2012 and with thousands of private apartments available in Rio, boosted no doubt by major economic downturn, the major hotels are not likely to benefit anywhere as much as at earlier Games. The world is changing fast.

As Guy Nowell reported today from Hong Kong, the worst kept secret in Asia, that the Volvo Ocean Race was moving out of mainland China to Hong Kong was confirmed.

A major success of the Volvo race has been the numbers of people brought to the Stopovers by the Sponsors and plainly Hong Kong is much more convenient and interesting to the Sponsors than Sanya or Qingdao etc.

Looking at the stopover map, it seems there are two more decisions to make, a stopover in the Middle East or Indian subcontinent and a South American destination will complete the 2017-2018 route.

Will negotiations for these two stopovers be completed before Mark Turner opens his office door in the VOR Alicante headquarters on June 6th. We shall see.

All we know is that 'The times they are a changin'