PyeongChang Winter Olympics: Formation, Growth and Staging

The paper analyses the formation stage, the growth stage and the staging of the event and along with that, the paper provides some recommendations for the future development of the destination.

Running head: PYEONGCHANG WINTER OLYMPICS
PyeongChang Winter Olympics
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1PYEONGCHANG WINTER OLYMPICS
Introduction:
The tourism and hospitality industry is observed to have significant growth in the
modern business context and the occurrence of notable events largely contributes in the
growth. The size and shape of the event along with the consumption of the people, helps in
the growth of the tourism of the host country. Several global sporting events like FIFA
Football World Cup, Olympics, ICC Cricket World Cup, Hockey World Cup or Rugby
World Cup are observed to boost the economy of the host region and that is pretty evident
from the urge of the countries in bidding for those events (Rojek 2013). The paper is focused
in the elaboration of one such event in the form of PyeongChang Winter Olympics that took
place in the year 2018. The paper analyses the formation stage, the growth stage and the
staging of the event and along with that, the paper provides some recommendations for the
future development of the destination.
Formation Stage:
The 23rd Olympic Winter Games took place in PyeongChang, Korea and was one of
the popular events that notably helped in the growth of the tourism and the hospitality
industry of the country. The forming stage of the event starts with the bidding process where
the country was subjected to compete with the nations like Germany and France. In the
bidding, South Korea was seen to have 63 votes compared to the 25 and 7 of Germany and
France respectively. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) in the year 2011, formed
the Pyeongchang 2018 Coordination Commission and later that year, IOC announced that
Kim Jin-Sun of South Korea will lead the organizing committee of the 2018 Winter Olympics
(Olympic.org 2019). In the month of October of that year, the Pyeongchang Organizing
Committee for the 2018 Olympic and the Paralympic Winter Games was observed to create

2PYEONGCHANG WINTER OLYMPICS
the master plan for the games and along with that discussed on the selection of the venues for
the sporting events (Kim 2018).
The organizing committee designed the plan for the construction of the Olympic
village and was seen to discuss with the IOC Coordination Commission for the design of the
medals. In addition to this, the commission and the organizing committee formed an effective
plan for the torch relay which is considered to be a notable sign of the Olympic. The
committee provided strong focus on the ticketing and the marketing of the product. The
committee had a major role in ensuring the live telecast of the events across the globe.
However, the committee faced some issues in managing the threats for the event which were
majorly political and the issues of discipline in the sports (Jonsson 2018). The North and
South Korean relationship was not that great and that was a concern for the organizing
committee in the formation stage of the games (Park 2018). Along with that, the incidents of
doping of the Russian athletes were seen to take significant limelight at that time which was a
major concern for the organizing committee of the games to ensure that the game is played in
the right spirit (Kim and Kim 2015).
Growth Stage:
The cost of the project was estimated to be 7 billion US dollar. However, the
organizing committee of the games reported an investment of almost twice the sum as the
country invested 13.1 billion US dollar for the project (English.moef.go.kr. 2019). The
organizing committee of the games was able to unveil the design of the medals for the games
in the month of September 2017 where Lee Suk-Woo’s design was selected. The design
included diagonal ridges on both sides, the Olympic rings on front, 2018’s Olympics’
emblem, the event name and the discipline. The committee announce the pricing of the
tickets in the month of April of 2018 and started selling the tickets from October that year.

3PYEONGCHANG WINTER OLYMPICS
The committee was able to set the price ranging from 20000 South Korean won which is 18
US dollars to 900000 South Korean won or 796 US dollars (Olympic.org 2019). However,
the committee set up the pricing of the tickets differently for the opening and closing
ceremony where they kept the range of price from 195 US dollar to 1327 US dollar
(Olympic.org 2019). The domestic ticket sales of the games were reported to be slow as
20.7% of the allocated 750000 tickets were sold (Olympic.org 2019).
However, the international sales of the tickets were significantly impressive as 59.7%
of the 320000 international tickets were already sold by the month of October 2017
(Olympic.org 2019). During the month of January, the sales were observed to improve
significantly and 77% of the total tickets were sold out. The IOC was able to announce the
acquisition of the exclusive broadcasting rights of the Olympics for the different regions of
the World in the month of June, 2015. Discovery Communications won the broadcasting
rights for major parts of Europe and the free to air channels like the DMAX of Spain, Kanal 5
of Sweden and the TVNorge of Norway were observed to take notable initiative for the
broadcasting agency (Corporate.discovery.com. 2019).
Staging of the Olympics:
The Alpensia Sports Park was the main focus of the organizing committee for the
event. The arrangements for the ski jumping, biathlon, cross-country skiing, luge and alpine
skiing were staged in the sporting facility of the park. Apart from this, the freestyle skiing
took place in the outdoor sports venue of Bongpyeong-myeon (Mcst.go.kr 2019). Along with
this, the alpine skiing (downhill, Super-G and combined) took place in Jeongseon Alpine
Centre. Ice hockey, curling, long track speed skating, short track speed skating and figure
skating conducted at Gangneung Olympic Park (Mcst.go.kr 2019). Kwandong Hockey Centre
was used for the women’s competition in Ice hockey. The organizing committee of the

4PYEONGCHANG WINTER OLYMPICS
games were focused in accommodating the primetime broadcasts. The committee divided the
program into five different parts which were the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony,
events competition, events finals and exhibition gala. The construction of the calendar for the
event included an opening ceremony on the 9th February along with a closing ceremony on
25th of February (Olympic.org 2019).
Recommendations:
The recommendations for the event destination will be to improve the infrastructure.
The IOC and the organizing committee of the games were observed to face significant
amount of issues in the construction of the Olympic village. The transportation of the
materials was reported to be a major concern for the organizations responsible for the
construction work. Along with that, the overall transportation of the country was not that
great in connecting the prime locations of the South Korean tourism. Hence the government
of the country is in need to develop proper infrastructure with a precise focus on the
improvement of connectivity to the prime tourist destinations of the country.
Along with that, the country is significantly affected due to the political frictions and
the condition is not preferable for the sustainable tourism. The political tension between the
host country and their neighbour country, South Korea is seen to be the headlines of various
global news agencies for repetitive days and that certainly produces notable detrimental
impact on the image of the country for tourism. The government needs to make sure that they
manage the political stress in an efficient manner and globally promote the country as one of
the pioneer destination in the Asian tourism market.
Apart from this, the people of the country is observed to be significantly indifferent to
the opportunities in the tourism industry and that is evident from the fact that GDP of the
mentioned industry for South Korea is decreasing. In addition to this, the absence of the sense

5PYEONGCHANG WINTER OLYMPICS
of urgency for the achievement of increased revenue of the local organizations from the
global events as such the Olympics was considered to be a major loophole. Hence the
recommendation will be the increase the consciousness of the people regarding the benefits
of the tourism and at the same time, the government is expected to motivate the local
organizations with monetary benefits and relaxation from the taxation.

6PYEONGCHANG WINTER OLYMPICS
References:
Corporate.discovery.com. 2019. Discovery, Inc.. [online] Available at:
https://corporate.discovery.com/
English.moef.go.kr. 2019. Ministry of Economy and Finance. [online] Available at:
http://english.moef.go.kr/co/selectAboutMosf.do?boardCd=C0006
Jonsson, G., 2018. What is the Significance of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics?:
March 15, Commentary.
Kim, J.J., 2018, February. Branding Korea through the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics:
Objectives, Strategies and Challenges of the Bid and Organizing Committees. In 9th
INTERNATIONAL SPORT BUSINESS SYMPOSIUM (p. 19).
Kim, M.S. and Kim, I.G., 2015. A research on supportive policy for domestic winter sports
on the occasion of 2018 pyeongchang winter olympics. Indian Journal of Science and
Technology, 8(27).
Mcst.go.kr 2019. Ministry of Sports and Culture - South Korea. [online] Available at:
http://www.mcst.go.kr/english/
Olympic.org 2019. International Olympic Committee. IOC - International Olympic
Committee. [online] Available at: https://www.olympic.org/the-ioc
Olympic.org 2019. International Olympic Committee. PyeongChang Olympics | Next Winter
Games in Korea. [online] Available at: https://www.olympic.org/pyeongchang-2018
Olympic.org 2019. International Olympic Committee. Sports | List of Summer and Winter
Olympic Sports. [online] Available at: https://www.olympic.org/sports

7PYEONGCHANG WINTER OLYMPICS
Park, J., 2018. Challenges for Building Social Consensus on Peace in the Korean Peninsula
after PyongChang Winter Olympics.
Rojek, C., 2013. Event power: How global events manage and manipulate. Sage.