By Julius Baumann

MATCH, the event company responsible for arranging 2010 World Cup accommodation and ticketing, is targeting lodges, guesthouses and bed & breakfast establishments to make up a shortfall of hotel rooms needed for the tournament.

Match needs 55000 hotel rooms to meet requirements for 2010, and has so far secured 35000 rooms. To help meet its target, Match hopes to secure 10000 rooms from smaller establishments in the next few months, having already contracted more than 5000 rooms.

Match controls about 80% of the hotel rooms available to the market in 2010. When SA won the rights to host the soccer tournament in 2006, hotel groups City Lodge, Protea Hotels and Southern Sun had already committed about 19000 rooms as part of the bid process. Since then Match has continued to sign up new hotel inventory.

Adam Brown, senior executive manager at Match, said that the company has worked closely with Tourism Enterprise Partnership and the Tourism Grading Council of SA to get smaller guesthouses and lodges graded and contracted to Match.

Match will begin releasing rooms and tickets to the market later this year and early next year, once it has secured all its accommodation requirements. In July it will begin the selection of tour operators permitted to sell Fifa-approved packages.

Source: Business Day