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Trump Hotel Rush Adds to Rio Summer Olympics Lodging Crunch

  • Olympic federations have back-up hotel in case Trump delayed
  • Holiday Inn postponed opening two Rio hotels until 2017
The Trump Hotel in Rio de Janeiro's western Barra da Tijuca district is under construction on April 21, 2016.

The Trump Hotel in Rio de Janeiro's western Barra da Tijuca district is under construction on April 21, 2016.

Photographer: Nadia Susman/Bloomberg
Tariq Panja and Jonathan Levin

Builders behind Rio de Janeiro’s first Trump-branded hotel are racing to open the property in July, just weeks before the Summer Olympics. Not all lodgers are confident they’ll make it.

Several international sports federations, who are slated to stay at the Trump Hotel in the tourist district of Barra de Tijuca, were told by Olympic organizers last week that they are concerned it won’t be ready on time and a back-up hotel has been arranged. “That is the one we fear,” Agberto Guimaraes, Rio 2016’s director of sport, told the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations last week in Lausanne, Switzerland.