Winter Olympic Games, cities, and tourism: a systematic literature review in this domain

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to present the current state of scientific knowledge on the Winter Olympic Games (2000 to present-day) and their urban and tourism-related impacts. To achieve this, a scoping review was performed using established methodology. Of the 1694 English and French peer-reviewed sources identified from 14 different databases, 47 met the specific inclusion criteria and were retained for analysis. Findings were divided into three sections according to our objectives: (1) methodological profiles of the selected articles; (2) urban impacts; (3) tourism-related impacts. First, the reviewed sources – mainly qualitative – generally showed that mega-events such as the Winter Olympic Games are a catalyst for the urban renewal of host cities. However, these urban transformations must be part of a global scenario to ensure long-term viability. Although research shows that the Games represent an opportunity for the development of the tourism industry, the scoping review showed mixed results in terms of tourist flows and the enhancement of the city’s image. The concluding remarks identify the limitations of this study and offer opportunities and areas of research regarding the next Winter Games.

KEYWORDS:

• Winter Olympic Games
• cities
• tourism
• systematic literature review

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The scale of the investment injected into the Vancouver Olympics preparation promised a significant impact on the city because of its importance. This partly demonstrates the special attention paid to the host city in the scientific literature according to Ferguson et al. (2011). The authors explained that this is because Vancouver is the largest city to have hosted the Winter Olympics so far.

2 It would be simplistic to associate spending growth with increased crowds, as the Olympic events and the higher cost of accommodation incur additional costs (Vetitnev et al., 2016).

3 The number of rooms built went from 6700 in Salt Lake City (Andranovich & Burbank, 2011), to 10,198 in Turin (Bottero et al., 2012), and 27,000 in Sochi (Müller, 2014b). This statistic was not available for the city of Vancouver.