While this is familiar to anyone who has traveled at all in the Soviet Union/Russia/CIS, the point is that the organizers had a chance to build everything from scratch so that the international visitors (and tourists after the Games) would flock to Sotchi in great numbers. If the plumbing in the hotel is not really up to the "international standard" (nebulous concept, I know, but this is the term used a lot in Russia, also sometimes "European standard"), it indicates to me that not enough thought went into designing the facilities. Which in turn is a symptom of many other problems...