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Climate summit flop feared

Published 19.08.09   10:49 

Hotel reservation cancellations spark failure fears for the upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen. The Foreign Ministry has cancelled 20,000 overnight hotel reservations meant for people attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December. The move is expected to cost...

The Foreign Ministry has cancelled 20,000 overnight hotel reservations meant for people attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December.

The move is expected to cost the hotel industry about 40 million kroner in lost revenue, calculated by each night in a hotel room costing about 2,000 kroner, reports Business.dk.

Reservations in a number of hotels across Zealand and parts of Skåne in southern Sweden have been cut from 120.000 to 100.000 overnight stays.

The two-week conference in December is expected to attract between 12,000 and 15,000 participants.
The ministry described the cancellations as a natural ‘adjustment’.

ut Thomas Færgeman, the director of environmental think tank Concito, was concerned the government had lost confidence that it could broker a ground-breaking climate and had therefore lowered expectations as to how many participants were expected.

Hotel cancellations have also been taking place in Copenhagen city and Denmark’s largest hotel, the Radisson SAS Scandinavia near the conference centre, has seen 10 percent of the ministry’s bookings cancelled.

The hotel’s general manager, Karim Nielsen believed the cancellations were due to the Foreign Ministry lacking confirmation of attendance from participants.

‘No one knows how big the Copenhagen climate conference is going to be. If the ministry doesn’t cancel the surplus reserved rooms at least a month before the conference, they will be liable for 100 percent of the payment,’ Nielsen said.

Svend Olling, the ministry’s head of logistics for the conference, said the cancellations were not due to fears of non-attendance but rather for geographic reasons.

‘It’s only natural that we remove some of the hotels and rooms from the list that have not been sought after as much because of travel time and distance [from the conference centre],’ Olling said.

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