Economic Impacts Of Olympic Games (Research Paper Sample)

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Economic Impacts Of Olympic Games
Tourism could be elucidated as the commercial operation and organization of holidays and tours to areas of interest. The Olympic games are events described by various authors as a hallmark, mega-events, and peripatetic. Mega-events are seen as a gateway for image development and rivalry involving cities for jobs and investments. This always leads to the attraction of visitors to the hosts of the mega-event. It also affects the host’s economy by visitor expenditure and the need for developing the services and the social amenities necessary for the visitors. Therefore, Olympic tourism could be elucidated as the attraction of visitors to a given destination as a result of a mega-event that is hosted at the destination. That said, this work discusses the economic effects Olympic tourism by focusing on the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
To begin with, an appraisal of the effect of the Beijing Olympics is reported to have had a crucial ripple effect on the Chinese economy. The Chinese invested heavily in the preparations for hosting the Olympic games by improving the infrastructure and also building five star hotels. According to Locate in Kent (29), $ 40 billion was invested in the infrastructure. This transformed Beijing’s city scape into a different city after the Olympics. The Olympics also forced China to develop the advertising, internet, and the sports sectors of her economy. Such investments did not only affect China’s economic growth during the Olympics, but it also had long term effects on the Chinese economy. Evidently, the Beijing Olympics had both long term and short term economic effects on the country.
According to Klako Group (12), the Chinese economy enjoyed direct, indirect and induced economic effects of the 2008 Olympics. The direct effects were enjoyed by reaping the money that had been invested by the committees that organized the Olympics. There were also other committees that had to oversee the games. As a result, these committees had to spend money on booking hotels and meals. Some of the indirect benefits included money spent by visitors on purchasing Chinese goods. Lastly, induced economic effects were the multiplier results of both the direct and indirect effects. The number of tourists to Beijing also arose because of the 2008 Olympics. It is estimated that Beijing received 2.5 million domestic tourists and 600,000 foreign tourists during the Olympics. This represented a growth of 8-9 percent from the previous tourism record. Ultimately, the Olympics also developed a legacy for Beijing. This can increase the sum of tourists after the Olympics.
The London Olympics of 2012 also had similar effects on the London economy. According to the Lloyd Banking Group (67), there was a moderate increase in domestic tourism prior to the event. This stresses on the previous idea that the Olympics have direct effects to the host’s economy. This owes to the reality that companies that were willing to win contracts for preparing London for the Olympics made their investments prior to the Olympics. There was a decline in the number of foreign tourists prior to the event because most people postponed their visits to coincide with the Olympics. Another effect of the Olympic tourism is that it lowers the amount of profits that a normal tourism season produces. This is because it has been noted that Olympic visitors spent less on non-games related tourism than normal visitors.
The Lloyd Bank Group estimated an increase of 2 percentage points of business travel volumes. In fact, the same authors state that over 18 million visitors had visited London prior to the Olympics. This owes to the fact that the Olympic torch was a key tourist attraction prior to the Olympics. There was an influx of tourists during the Olympic period. The total influx of tourists was estimated to reach 45,500. Unfortunately, reports from local hotels and businesses indicated that business fell during the Olympic gam...