Rio de Janeiro will host the UN Conference on Sustainable Development http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/ with a program that begins on the 13th and ends on the 22nd of June. According to O Globo this morning there are already 150 confirmed heads of State coming, 190 official national delegations and 50,000 already registered visitors (diplomats, journalists, business people, politicians). An estimated 10,000 people are expected to camp. All this presents one tiny issue: Rio de Janeiro has only 27,000 hotel rooms today! The Copacabana Palace and the Sheraton Leblon have been booked in their entirety by official Head of State groups and almost all other hotels anywhere around are full. In Centro the occupancy is so far only about 80% (nobody important really wants to stay there) and all teh high-end properties are totally booked. So, it seems to be an excellent time not to come to Rio de Janeiro! Too bad June is a nice cool month, my favorite month of the year under normal circumstances. I plan to leave town myself. Anyway, it is safe to say there will not be very many seats available during that time.
My family might be slightly upset were they to become homeless for the week. Only my spouse is choosing to leave with me.
We will be visiting June 16-22. Booked the flights back in September far before learning about the conference. We are renting an apartment due to the lack of hotel rooms. I think it will be interesting to show the kids the effects of such an event. I just hope that the delegates and their staffs are doing mostly conference things so that they won't be to much in our way.
If you stay out of expensive restaurants in Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon you probably will not be too much inconvenienced except in traffic. There will certainly be endless motorcades, helicopters aloft and lots of police presence everywhere. I am guessing, though. I have never been in Rio during such an event.
The good news is we probably won't be hitting too many high end restaurants with our 5 and 8 year old boys with us. If we do though, my wife and I have experience with motorcades and secret service. When in San Jose, Costa Rica last year we happened to be dining at the same restaurant as the Canadian Prime Minister, the staffs of both the Canadian and British Embassies, and about 40 Canadian secret service. They were very friendly, but we had to walk about two blocks after dinner to get a cab because the streets around the restaurant were all blocked off.
Just in case you were inclined to ignore the advice. The EU and some other delegations have cancelled when there were not enough hotels rooms for them and the prices were Euro 600 and above per night when they could find them. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Amer...-Rio-s-dry-run-for-the-Olympics-and-World-Cup Please do come to visit Rio, but not during this June. We only have 26,000 rooms and there are more than 50,000 confirmed attendees for Rio+20.
