All Things Travel: Boston Never Needed The Olympics
BOSTON (CBS) – The shadow of The Big Dig dug Boston 2024 in a hole from which it never recovered. The small guys won out over big business.
A couple of major missteps dogged Boston's efforts. The first one was when people heard that former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation Richard Davey was named CEO with a salary of $300,000 and that former Governor Deval Patrick would be paid $7,500 a day for his efforts to secure the games.
Related: USOC Drops Boston 2024 Bid
Then there was the cost of a temporary stadium to be torn down after the Games and Boston 2024 apparently forgot that you needed a media center.
One myth that should have been dispelled by Boston 2024 is that major traffic jams would accompany the games here. I was in Los Angeles for the Summer Olympics in 1984 and freeway traffic never moved better as a lot of people left town for a couple of weeks.
Actually, Boston never really needed the Summer Olympics to showcase the city.
Five new international airlines will be flying to Boston by the end of the year and at least two more are scheduled to land here next year. Logan is handling record international visitors.
In the year 2000, I spent a month in China and everywhere we went, we heard the same three words: "Boston… MIT and Harvard."
The thousands of international college students studying here make that point clear.
Over the weekend, I attended The Boston Globe/WGBH Arts event in Copley Square and a third of the crowd must have been tourists. Many were wearing Detroit Tigers hats and shirts supporting their team visiting Fenway.
One interesting point is that neither Massport nor The Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism was willing to comment on Monday's USOC action.
"Despite the withdrawal of Boston's bid, our business, government and civic leaders can and should continue the conversation about what our region should look like 10 or 20 years down the road," said the new President of The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce James Rooney.
Boston already has two of the world's best known sporting events: The Boston Marathon and The Head of The Charles Regatta.
Boston is already on the map.
Bob Weiss reports on business travel on Mondays at 5:55 a.m. on WBZ NewsRadio 1030.
