Foreign Olympics Fans Barred From Games and They Want Their Money Back

Above, the Tokyo Skytree and Asahi Beer Hall. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Before the pandemic hit, I had contemplated taking a trip to Japan last year. But the pandemic nixed all that.

Now, it has been announced that foreign Olympics fans are barred from attending the Olympics in Tokyo this summer and wondering when (or if) they will get their money back for events tickets purchased and, in some cases, travel expenses. Ouch!

The Salt Lake Tribune posted:

The announcement last week that international spectators would be barred from this summer’s Tokyo Olympics brought some closure to thousands of fans who had been wondering for months whether they would be traveling to Japan later this year.

Almost immediately, though, many of these newly jilted ticket holders began nursing a new headache: uncertainty about if they would get back the money they had prepaid for tickets and travel — more than $10,000, in some cases — and, if so, when exactly they would get it.

“At this point they’ve held our funds for two years already, and I’m concerned it’s going to take months more to get them back again,” said Monica Treece, an Olympic fan from Denver who started the process of buying her tickets for the Tokyo Games in the summer of 2019. “Everyone is still in the dark. We’re just waiting.”

Similar worries were expressed in Olympic circles long before Saturday, when Tokyo organizers announced the ban on foreign fans. The decision confirmed an outcome that many had expected as the pandemic plowed on around the world, but organizers offered no road map for fans eager to get their money back.

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