Olympic Lessons in Sustainability, Safety, and Innovation

Skift Meetings had the opportunity to chat with Panos Tzivanidis, the director of corporate events and services for IOC, the International Olympic Committee.

Tzivanidis and his team are responsible for all events organized by the IOC worldwide, and all accommodation needs, travel, and accreditation for the Olympics.

What are some of the lessons that you learned from the Paris games that would be of interest to event planners?

One of the most important is understanding cultural differences when you’re doing business, especially for such a long period. Usually in the past, your time span of preparation was between one to two years before the event. Now sometimes you have to deliver within six months. So during this planning phase, you get to understand the culture a bit. But you don’t spend too much time there.

When you’re talking about the Olympics, you’re spending six to seven years planning this event, so you get really into the details of the cultural differences and sometimes the advantages and disadvantages.

In France, it was very interesting to see that there were some stereotypes about how the French people deal with business. When you get to know them, you understand, for example, that they’re much more interested in legacy and of doing the right thing rather than just the commercial approach.

This was very important to learn because it is what we are trying to do through the Olympics with legacy and sustainability and all the approaches we’re taking with diversity and inclusion. In Paris, we managed to have, for the first time, complete gender-balanced games.

How important is data?

Giving hoteliers historical data is extremely important because it is the only way for them to understand the real impact of the event in their city. And sometimes they get pleasantly surprised or unpleasantly surprised because the event is three to four weeks. That doesn’t mean that the hotels will be full for three to four weeks.

Safety is a focus of the Olympics. Can you explain?

Paris handled it extremely well being in contact with the local authorities to create a safe environment and to be able to promote the safe environment. When event planners are going in a city, they should be spending more time with the authorities to market and the importance that city puts into the safety and wellbeing of everybody.

You must have presence of the forces, because safety starts with perception. With the Olympics, all the nations are behind it. It’s a huge mechanism. There is cooperation and collaboration between many different cities on intelligence, on exchange of ideas, and previous experiences. So, the whole machine gets together to create a safe environment.

How important was it to have contingency plans in place, especially given the persistent rain during the opening ceremony?

This was the first time the opening ceremony was open to the public. The initial idea of having an opening ceremony that spanned so many kilometers and in so many different sites and areas of the city, was a huge challenge and an amazing idea. 

My team is not dealing with all aspects of the opening ceremony because this is really the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee. We deal with the Olympic family, the dignitaries, the VIPs, the sponsors, corporate clients. When we learned it may rain, we provided the necessary means of protection. 

But we were under the rain. It was very complicated. We had to provide the ponchos, safety, and hospitality areas for people to get warm and if they wanted to have some towels, classic things. But to my big surprise, and this speaks to the power of the Olympics and of the opening ceremony, very few people left. I was there with all the heads of state with their ponchos, taking advantage of this unique moment.

Paris was unlike any other Olympics. Did you intentionally throw out the playbook?

We wanted to create new possibilities for the organizing committees. The venues Paris chose were so unique and they projected an image of their city accentuating the brand of Paris.

What was one of the moments that is unforgettable to you?

We were heavily involved with planning the gala dinner at the Louvre for heads of state that was held on the eve of the 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony. It is a once-in-a-lifetime event having 70 heads of state plus 400 guests eating under the iconic pyramid in the Louvre.

Sustainability was a big part of the games in Paris. You set a carbon emission goal from the start. Did you achieve the goal?

Yes, we did, and Paris did an excellent job on sustainability on all fronts. They reused venues and didn’t build any new permanent venues unless there was a strategy and legacy component. They did build the swimming pool, but no other venues were built. There were temporary constructions that were reused and repurposed afterwards.

The IOC is focused on sustainability, it is one of the pillars of Agenda 2020+5 and we have the objective of reducing our emissions by 50%. Plus, and specific for our institutional events, we are completely ISO 20121 compliant. And on top of that as an organization, we have CO2 emission budgets per department.

So, every department doesn’t only have a financial budget but also an emissions budget that must be managed. The 2028 Summer Olympics will be in LA. Sending 10 of our staff members from Switzerland to LA is not a small thing. 

We need to optimize those trips in such a way that we’re not taking two or three trips per year. Maybe we will take one long trip, and the others will be virtual meetings. If we do need multiple trips, we will have to send less people.

We have also created our own forests in three areas of Africa so whenever we need to offset, we offset in our own forests.