country to leverage Olympic-related sports tourism. Such events will attract a much more high profile line-up which, in turn, will attract more spectators, either those travelling specifically for the event (Primary Sports Tourists), or those taking in the event as part of a wider trip (Tourists interested in Sport). While a forth-coming Olympics may mean that a country may stage more than its usual share of World and European championships or events, it is likely that few additional events will need to be hosted, rather the strategy should be to expand current events in the years before the Games. This is a more sustainable long-term strategy for Sports Event tourism after the Olympic Games have come and gone.
A strategy of capitalizing and building upon existing events is something that should also be part of provision of the Cultural Olympiad, which commences four years before the start of the Games, as soon as the preceding Games has ended. Such Olympic-related cultural events are likely to entice Olympic tourism spending among Pre-Games Casuals who are in the area in any case, but who may wish to attend such Olympic-related events and festivals. However, the provision of festivals and other events in the Cultural Olympiad should both capitalize on cur-rent cultural provision, and carry a flavour of local interpretation of Olympic-related ideas. In this way, the work put into devel-oping such festivals is likely to result in a continuing event after the Olympic spotlight has turned elsewhere.
A final issue for regions outside of the host city/region to consider is the potential tourist trade they may be able to attract among those people who are put-off visiting the host city/region because they feel it will be ‘a building site’ in the pre-Games period (Pre-Games Avoiders). While the potential to attract avoiders may be greater during the Games period itself, there are still opportunities to market other areas of the coun-try to ensure that potential inbound tourists still visit, albeit a different part of the country. Such opportunities, of course, will depend on the motivations of such Pre-Games Avoiders, and the extent to which the host city/region has a unique product that is differentiated from that of the rest of the country.
Strategies for leveraging Olympic tourism
strategic objective of optimizing Olympic-related tourism bene-fits shown in Figure 4.1 are relevant during the Games period.
The most obvious category of Olympic tourist during the Games period is Games Visitors, those tourists who are visit-ing the host city/region because of the Olympic Games, and would not have made the trip if the Games were not taking place there. It would be expected that the attraction of these tourists would derive from strategies aimed at maximizing Olympic-related visits. However, many of these tourists will travel regard-less of leveraging strategies and they will often exhibit the ‘sports junkie’ profile described by Gibson (1998). The general media coverage of the Games will often be enough to attract such visi-tors and, as such, further leveraging strategies aimed at maximiz-ing Olympic-related visits have less potential to ‘add-value’ to tourism benefits than efforts in other areas. Consequently, while this means of leveraging is relevant, during the Games period it is less so than the other three leveraging means highlighted in Figure 4.1.
Of course, while Games Visitors is the only category of Olympic tourist to have made a specific trip to see the Games, other categories (Extensioners, Time-Switchers, and Home-Stayers) have each considered the Games at the trip decision-making stage. Consequently, for Games Visitors, Extensioners, and Time-Switchers leveraging strategies aimed at lengthening Olympic-related visits are important (Home-Stayers, of course, cannot have their visit lengthened). Chalip (2004:235) highlights four questions that should be considered in lengthening visitor stays, each of which may be relevant to Olympic tourism:
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What new event components can we add to increase the num-ber of days over which the event takes place? How will the market respond to these components?•
What entertainments might be added in the lead up to the event to create a lengthened festival atmosphere around the event? How will the market respond to those entertainments?•
What post-event social spaces and activities can we create through which event visitors can revel in their shared subcul-tural identities? What is required to make those spaces and activities particularly appealing to event visitors?•
What activities or tours can we offer as part of event pack-age bundles? Which activities and tours will be particularly attractive to the event’s market segments?Of course, some of these questions have very different implica-tions for Olympic tourism than for a general consideration of
Sports Event tourism. For example, the second question relat-ing to how a lengthened festival atmosphere can be created may seem a little superfluous, on a macro-level at least, because, as noted earlier, the Olympic ‘festival’ can last for years rather than just the period of the event itself. However, on a micro-level of extending trip visits, the question remains relevant as a festival atmosphere around the event itself may contribute to the decision to take an extended visit.
As strategies aimed at lengthening visits are targeting the trip decision making stage, it will be the perception that there will be an ongoing festival around the event that will cause tourists to plan a lengthened stay. In this respect, tangible markers of a lengthened event need to be promoted. As Chalip (2004) notes, this may be pre-event parties or post-event festivals. In respect of the Olympics, a multi-sport event that lasts 16 days, the challenge of lengthening stays may be related to enticing visitors to stay longer than the period for which they have specific event tickets, rather than the 16-day period of the entire event. As such, the provision of big screens in public places, showing the action and continuing the party may be a way in which stays may be lengthened.
The provision of big screens may be a consideration for regions outside of the host city/region, and may link the second and fourth of Chalip’s (2004) questions in an Olympic context. Chalip asks what activities or tours might be offered or bundled with the event. It may be that Olympic tourists who have seen the specific events for which they have tickets may wish to both continue the party, but also spread their wings and visit other parts of the host country. As such big screen festival areas, akin to the Fan Fests that were so popular in Germany during the 2006 World Cup, in locations and regions around the country can allow tourists to both visit a broader range of areas and continue to feel part of the Olympic party. A further consideration for regions outside of the host city/region is the extent to which Olympic tourists can be encouraged to take non-Olympic-related trips around the rest of the country after the Games have finished. Chalip’s consider-ation of post-event tours largely relates to the host city/region.
However, with an event as large as the Olympic Games there may be an anti-climatic element of ‘post-event hangover’ in the host city/region itself. As such, there may be opportunities for other regions to offer explicitly non-Olympic activities to extend Olympic tourists’ stays.
In addition to lengthening visitor stays, leveraging strategies for all categories of Olympic tourists producing positive flows in relation to enticing Olympic tourism spending are very simi-lar to those in the pre-Games period. As such, the questions
posed earlier in the chapter in relation to the co-ordination of Olympic promotions and themes remain relevant in the Games period. Such questions are posed to affect post-arrival behaviour in encouraging visitors to engage with tourist activities that are related but peripheral to the Games themselves. Many of these strategies revolve around the creation of a festival atmosphere in which tourists feel they are enjoying a unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience on which it is worth spending money.
While the above strategies may be useful in respect of ‘positive flow’ Olympic tourists, chapter three also highlighted a number of tourism flows out of the host city/region, or aversion markets, during the period of the Games. Of these markets, some are temporal flows (i.e., the timing of the trip is changed rather than the trip itself) which have a neutral tourism impact (Changers and Pre- and Post-Games Switchers). However, others (Runaways and Cancellers) are negative flows for which strategies should be considered to minimize impacts. Such negative flows may, in fact, be exacerbated by strategies to maximize or lengthen visits, and this should be borne in mind when developing such strategies.
Strategies to minimize the effect of negative Olympic tourism flows during the Games need to be considered within the ‘strat-ified geography’ of such flows noted at the end of Chapter 3.
If an Olympic host city/region is considered within the context of a host country, three geographical levels may be identified:
the host city/region, the rest of the country, and the country as a whole. This stratified geography results in a different impact of tourism flows at different geographical levels. For example, if there is a flow of residents out of the host city/region dur-ing the Games period, then that is a negative flow for the host city/region, but if this flow is to another region in the country, then that is a positive flow for that region. However, the net flow for the country as a whole is neutral. Consequently, the Runaway category represents a negative effect for the host city/region, a potential opportunity for other regions throughout the country, and a challenge to ensure that the effect is neutral for the country as a whole. This, of course, implies that there may need to be very different Olympic tourism strategies at national level, at non-host regional level and in the non-host city/region (see discussions of the planning for the London 2012 Games in Chapter 10). In this respect, the host city/region will need to examine strategies to persuade Runaways to stay, which may mean toning down some of the other suggested leveraging strategies. Other regions might wish to consider opportunities that the Runaway aversion mar-kets provide. Chalip (2004:231), for example, notes that during the Olympic Games in 2000 some rural regions outside the host city of Sydney enjoyed a booming tourist business by promoting
themselves as Olympics-free zones. It falls, of course, to national tourism organizations to examine the best way to ensure that the national impact of aversion markets is as close to neutral as possible. This may involve persuading the host city/region to advertise other regions in the country that provide an escape from the Games, otherwise Runaway flows may go out of the country.
A similar set of considerations applies to potential Cancellers, a sub-set of the Avoiders category. One strategy is to attempt to change these negative flows to temporal (and therefore neu-tral) flows by persuading Cancellers to switch their trip to the pre- or post-Games period. Other strategies would be to per-suade Cancellers to make the trip, or to travel to another region in the country. In considering the Cancellers sub-category it is useful to extend the analysis of the ‘Games period’ to the months around the Games, and to illustrate this with a particu-lar example, that of the conference/exhibition sector of business tourism. Experiences from previous Games indicate that there is often a feeling that Olympic host cities/regions are ‘closed for business’ during Olympic year, and consequently much confer-ence/exhibition business may go elsewhere. The challenge here for host cities/regions is to persuade such potential Cancellers that they can still be accommodated within the city in the months around the Games, while the opportunity for other regions is to suggest that such conferences/exhibitions would be better served by taking their business to other areas of the country because the host city will be too busy and too focussed on the forthcom-ing Games. Again, the role of national tourism organizations is to ensure that the country as a whole retains the business by attempting to strike a balance between these two strategies.