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.
Strategies for leveraging Olympic tourism
Olympic media is addressed. Of the temporal flows, Changers (who changed their holiday away from the host city/region from a post-Games period to the time of the Games) and Time-Switchers (who changed their trip to the host city/region to coin-cide with the Games) will have already made their trip decisions and taken their Olympic-related tourism trips, and as such need not be considered in this section.
Consequently, the relevant Olympic tourist categories to be considered in leveraging post-Games tourism are the pos-itive flows of Post-Games Sports Tourists and Post-Games Casuals, and the neutral temporal flows of Post-Games Switchers (Avoiders). As in the pre-Games period, the most significant means of leveraging Olympic tourism (see Figure 4.1) are those aimed at enticing Olympic tourism spending and at maximiz-ing Olympic tourism visits, with the former aimmaximiz-ing to influence pre-trip planning and post-arrival behaviour and the latter aim-ing to influence the trip decision. Generally strategies will focus on maximizing visits among Post-Games Sports Tourists, and on enticing the spending of both Post-Games Sports Tourists and Post-Games Casuals.
Both in the host city/region and in other regions around the country, strategies aimed at maximizing post-Games Olympic tourism (as opposed to generating tourism through Olympic media which is discussed later in the chapter) will largely revolve around sports tourism. Returning, again, to the range of potential sports-related Olympic tourism products discussed in Chapter 1 (Sports Training, Sports Events, Luxury Sports Tourism, Sports Participation Tourism, and Tourism with Sports Content), it is likely that key products in the host city/region will be Sports Events, Sports Participation Tourism and Tourism with Sports Content. As such, much provision is analogous to that for the pre-Games period discussed earlier in the chapter. Post-Games Sports Tourists will wish to take part in activities in venues that have hosted Olympic events, either as a core part of the trip (Sports Events or Sports Participation Tourism) or as a supple-mentary activity (Tourism with Sports Content). As in the pre-Games period, vicarious participation is important, as are status and prestige motivators relating to having visited or competed in Olympic venues or along Olympic courses.
Vicarious participation may also be important in developing visitor attractions relating to the Games. The exact nature of these may depend on the events that take place during the Games themselves, but ‘iconic’ performances or stories may play a cen-tral part in any such attractions. However, such attractions, par-ticularly with the passage of time, are more likely to be part of the destination package (see later discussions relating to Olympic
media) than to comprises the prime trip purpose, and should be planned with the purpose of attracting Tourists Interested in Sport, be they Post-Games Sports Tourists or Post-Games Casuals.
An obvious strategy, for both the host city/region and other regions throughout the country, is to build on both the Olympic Games themselves and the range of sports and Cultural Olympiad events that have been developed in the pre-Games period to develop a continuing portfolio of events. Such strategies will largely be dependent on having carefully constructed a sus-tainable planning approach to events in the pre-Games period.
The rewards of such an approach should be a range of sports and cultural events in the host city/region that can continue to trade on the Olympic association. Furthermore, sports and cul-tural events that took place outside the host city/region in the pre-Games period will have had around a four year period to become established as significant events in their own right as a result of the pre-Games Olympic spotlight. If such events were organized well and ran smoothly in this pre-Games period, there is good reason to expect that they will be able to survive in their own right once Olympic attention has turned elsewhere.
While on the surface it would seem unlikely that there would be any Olympic-related opportunities in the Sports Training tourism area in the post-Games period, it may be that regions and facilities that hosted Olympic-related training camps for major teams or gold medal winning athletes can continue to bene-fit from this association. Ongoing provision for Sports Training might continue to be at the elite level, but provision may also be made for non-elite athletes and clubs to take part in more recre-ational Sports Training tourism, or for ‘learn-to-play’ courses to take place. The draw of a venue that has hosted gold medal win-ning individuals and teams will be significant for those sports tourists driven by status and prestige motivators. As such, for-mer venues of Olympic-related training camps (and, indeed, regions in which such venues are situated) should ensure that the Olympic association is capitalized upon in any post-Games marketing (see Olympic media discussions later in the chapter).
Of course, in each of the cases described above, there is the potential for a more upmarket offer that would locate such sports-related Olympic tourism products as Luxury Sports Tourism.
Hosts of sports such as sailing and tennis might consider how opportunities to take part in or watch sport at these Olympic venues might be packaged with top-class luxurious accommo-dation and services to attract the premium that many of those seeking Luxury Sports Tourism are prepared to spend. A further element of post-Games Olympic tourism, a significant proportion
of which might be at the luxury level, is that of conference and exhibition tourism. The added value that former Olympic event or Olympic training venues can add to this market is significant.
A final note of caution for the host city/region must be sounded in relation to the Post-Games Switchers category. These tourists, which are a sub-category of Avoiders, have been neg-atively motivated by the Olympic Games to take their trip to the host city/region at a later date to avoid the Games. Host cities/regions must ensure that the core tourism product that existed prior to the Olympic Games is not displaced by efforts to attract Olympic tourists, otherwise Post-Games Switchers may change their plans and become the other Avoiders sub-category – Cancellers. Attention, therefore, must be paid by destination marketers and managers, to ensuring that Olympic tourism products are carefully integrated into the more longstanding tourism products that the host city/region offers.