Question marks raised over tourism benefits of Olympics
Wednesday, 05 Nov, 2009
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The tourism benefits of hosting the Olympic Games is “wholly illusory” and could be detrimental, according to a new study.
The claims come from the European Tour Operators Association which has researched visitor arrival statistics for the past Olympics in Beijing (’08), Athens (’04), Sydney (2000), Atlanta (’96), Barcelona (’92) and Seoul (’88).
While some cities saw a peak in demand during the games, all saw a major disruption to their normal tourism market and none revealed any conspicuous tourism growth, ETOA said.
The findings will be of particular concern in the run up to the 2012 games being staged in London.
“The latest data from Beijing is particularly striking. From the spring of 2008 international visitor arrivals to Beijing plummeted and in the month before the Games, they were 30% down on the previous year,” the study said.
“In the months after the Games, the tourism slump continued with international arrivals more than 20% down.”
Last year London had nearly 15 million visitors, bringing in over £8 billion. It is already bracing itself for an influx of "atypical" visitors during the games, whose spending habits are not those of usual tourists, ETOA claimed.
If London followed the pattern of Beijing, it could see over 2.5 million fewer visitors at a loss of £1.5 billion.
While the data for Beijing needs to be seen in context as 2008 was not a strong year for tourism in the whole Asia Pacific region, the city still fared “considerably worse” than the rest of China. Demand for mainland China may have fallen by two per cent, Beijing lost 18% of it prior year’s total.
Tourism growth for Olympic cities tends to be stalled and the stall becomes most apparent when a comparison is made with competitor destinations.
For example, in the five years prior to the Olympics, Australia and New Zealand’s tourism was growing at the same rate but Australia’s growth lost ground significantly straight after the Olympics.
“It is clear that the Olympics did not materially help Australian tourism, or if it did, it made very little difference,” ETOA said. “Sydney’s even underperformed against the rest of Australia.
“The situation became so pronounced that Australia ran an advertising campaign to promote itself as a destination with the now infamous slogan “Where the bloody hell are you?’.”
ETOA executive director Tom Jenkins said: “Every city is unique, and each city handles the Olympics in its own way.
“But we have yet to have a games where tourism has not been disrupted, and disrupted in a way that causes real harm.
“Even in the case of Athens, where they carefully restricted new capacity, there were considerable losses before and after the games both in the Capital and throughout Greece.”
by Phil Davies
Phil Davies
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