PyeongChang Winter Olympics: Formation, Growth and Staging

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.