Attraction and Event Management Report: Winter Olympics Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, examining the event's lifecycle stages, from formation and growth to staging. It details the planning process, key stakeholders like the Pyeongchang Coordination Commission, and venue preparations including the coastal and Alpensia clusters. The report highlights the construction of venues, including the Olympic Village and the use of fake snow due to a lack of natural snowfall. The staging phase is evaluated, pointing out both successes and flaws, such as poor optics for viewers and time management issues impacting spectator attendance. Recommendations are offered to improve future events, including investing in high-quality optical technologies, adjusting event schedules for spectator convenience, and providing traditional medals instead of mascots. The report references multiple sources to support its findings, providing a well-rounded view of the event's management and its areas for improvement.

Running head: ATTRACTION AND EVENT MANAGEMENT
Attraction and Event Management
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The analysis of Event Life Cycle Stages
1. The formation stage of Pyeongchang’s Winter Olympics
The winter Olympic 2018 was held in Pyeongchang Country, South Korea. The Olympic
started in 9th February and the final ceremony was held on 25th February (Essex and de Groot
2016). The vision of the event was to offer a new horizon and a new growth of the Olympic
movement. The mission of the event managers of the mentioned event was to provide a unique
stage to the athletes so that they are able to achieve superior performances. The formation stage
of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic 2018 includes the preparation and planning of the event. On
October 2011, the Pyeongchang Coordination Commission was formed in order to coordinate as
well as plan the event. The chief stakeholders of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic 2018 include
The National Olympic Committees, the International federations as well as the commercial
partners who had sponsored a major part of the event (Kim, Choi and Kaplanidou 2015).
Figure 1: The opening ceremony of Pyeongchang Winter Olympics 2018
Source (The Japan Times 2018)

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The aim of the Pyeongchang Coordination Commission was to put together an effective plan of
designing the Olympic venue. The Pyeongchang Winter Olympic venue was comprised of three
clusters, namely, the coastal cluster, Alpensia Cluster and the Jungbong and Bokwang Phoenix
Park. While the coastal cluster is located in Gangneung, the Alpensia Cluster is located in
Daegwallyeongmyeon. The Bokwang and Jungbong Phoneix Park were both stand-alone venues.
The coastal cluster was comprised of the following buildings where events of the Olympic game
were held.
1. The Gyeongpo Ice Hall: Where figure skating, as well as the Short track speed skating,
was held
2. The Union Hockey Center: where the Ice hockey games were held
3. The Gangneung Indoor Ice Ring : the venue for the Curling competition (Preuss 2013)
4. The Gangneung Sports Complex Speed Skating Facility –The venue for speed skating
The Alpensia cluster was consists of the following buildings
1. Olympic Park of Hoenggye: The venue for both the opening as well as the Closing
Ceremonies
2. Alpensia Biathlon Centre: The venue where all the Biathlon competition had taken place.
3. Alpensia Sliding Center: The venue where bobsled, luge, and skeleton portions of the
Games took place
4. Alpensia Ski Jumping Stadium: The venue designed for Ski-Jumping and Nordic
jumping
5. Alpensia Nordic Center: The venue for Nordic combined as well as cross-country skiing

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 Yongpyong Resort: The venue where giant slalom and slalom alpine skiing competitions
occurred
6. The Olympic Village: This area was designed to provide temporary residence to the
athletes.
Figure 1: Plan of the Olympic Village
Source (International Olympic Committee. 2018)
2. The growth stage of the Pyeongchang’s Winter Olympics
The growth stage of the mentioned event includes an arrangement of the event with the help
of active participation of the above-mentioned stakeholders. At this stage of the mentioned event,
the experts of the International Federations helped the event coordinators to a great extent by
providing necessary assistance to prepare a fantastic venue as well as to organize an outstanding
test event and sporting competition. Moreover, in order to provide a smooth and hustle free
travelling experience for the spectators as well as the participants, a high-speed rail line was
constructed that connects Seoul with Pyeongchang (Brittain and Beacom 2018).

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Figure 2: Construction of the Stadium
Source: (International Olympic Committee 2018)
The organization of Winter Olympic 2018 was a huge undertaking for South Korea. Initially, it
was estimated the total expense of conducting the event will be around 7 billion dollars (Hoeger
et al. 2018). However, the Council of the Foreign Relation stated that the total expense of the
mentioned event was 13 billion dollars which have nearly double of the estimated expense.
3. The staging of the Pyeongchang’s Winter Olympics
The opening and the closing ceremony of Pyeongchang Olympic 2018 had taken place at the
Pyeongchang Olympic stadium which was built to accommodate 35000 spectators (McBride
2018). The inauguration of the mentioned event was done by Mr Moon Jae-In, the president of

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the Republic of Korea. The site of the opening ceremony was constructed in a pentagonal shape
in order to indicate the five great elements of life that include fire, earth, air, space and ethar. All
the games were telecasted live globally. Due to Global warming, Pyeongchang lacked the
necessary amount of snowfall. Hence 98 percent of the snow used during the event was exported
(Kim and Baker 2018). The project manager of Pyeongchang Winter Olympic 2018, Ian Honey
stated that the fake snows were used by the event management just to ensure that the outdoor
window sports are being played smoothly.
Figure 3: Fake Ice in Pyeongchang Winter Olympic 2018
Source (International Olympic Committee 2018)

6ATTRACTION AND EVENT MANAGEMENT
In spite of the fact that that the mentioned Olympic event was a successful one, several flaws,
during the staging period of the event, was detected. Firstly the provision of optics to the
television views as well as to the skater was pathetic. The hazy and unclear optics had lead to
dissatisfaction of a good number of spectators. Moreover, there was a serious problem with the
time management of the event. The starting time of the completions was kept as early as 10 am.
As a result of these several spectators were unable to arrive at the venue on stipulated time.
4. Recommendation
As been stated earlier several loopholes were detected during both the planning as well as
staging period of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic 2018. In the following paragraphs, effective
suggestions will be discussed to prevent these mistakes from happening in future. Firstly, the
optics provided through televisions as well as to the skaters was of very poor quality. It is
suggested that in future, the management team should invest on high-quality optical technologies
to provide good quality optics to the participants as well as to the spectators who are on the other
side of the television.
The second flaw of the mentioned event includes ineffective time management. In order to
directly telecast the event keeping accordance to the prime time of US, the event manager of the
mentioned event planned the starting of all the competition as early as 10 a.m. in the morning.
Moreover, the exhibition Gala of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics 2018 started at 9.30 am
(International Olympic Committee 2018). Hence for a good number of spectators, it was difficult
to arrive on time after going through the multiple numbers of security checks. As a result of this,
a nearly empty stadium was evidenced during the first half of the competition. In order to avoid

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the mentioned issue in future, the management is suggested to plan the opening time of the
competition after assessing the convenience of the spectators.
When it comes to prize distribution, it has been reported that instead of flower and medals, the
Olympic winners were offered the official mascot which is a soft toy. This factor as left a good
number of the athletes feeling offended. Hence, it is suggested to the management to invest in
traditional gold, silver and bronze medals since these medals have the ability to provide a feeling
of self-satisfaction to the winners.
Figure 4: Olympic winners with Mascots
Source (International Olympic Committee 2018)

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While all the games were played during the morning, the medal ceremony of the mentioned
event was held during the night. Hence the interval between the morning event and the award
giving ceremony was approximately 5-6 hours (International Olympic Committee 2018). As a
result of this, the majority of the spectators were found to return to their residence and majority
of the seats during the award giving ceremony were found to be vacant. In order to avoid such
condition in future, the management committee of the event should plan the events in such a way
that spectators are able to view all the parts of the event in one go.

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Reference List
Brittain, I. and Beacom, A., 2018. Introduction. In The Palgrave Handbook of Paralympic
Studies (pp. 1-11). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Essex, S.J. and de Groot, J., 2016. The Winter Olympics: Driving Urban Change, 1924–2022.
In Olympic Cities (pp. 84-109). Routledge.
Hoeger, W.W., Hoeger, S.A., Hoeger, C.I. and Fawson, A.L., 2018. A lifetime of Physical
Fitness and Wellness. Cengage Learning.
International Olympic Committee. 2018. “The stage is set for excellent Olympic Winter Games
in 2018”. [online] Available at: https://www.olympic.org/news/the-stage-is-set-for-excellent-
olympic-winter-games-in-2018 [Accessed 16 May 2018].
International Olympic Committee. 2018. Bridgestone drives the Olympic Winter Games beyond
snow and ice. [online] Available at: https://www.olympic.org/news/bridgestone-drives-the-
olympic-winter-games-beyond-snow-and-ice [Accessed 16 May 2018].
International Olympic Committee. 2018. PyeongChang 2018 Olympics | Next Winter Games in
Korea. [online] Available at: https://www.olympic.org/pyeongchang-2018 [Accessed 16 May
2018].
Kim, A., Choi, M. and Kaplanidou, K., 2015. The role of media in enhancing people's perception
of hosting a mega sports event: the case of Pyeongchang's winter Olympics bids. International
Journal of Sports Communication, 8(1), pp.68-86.
Kim, S. and B. Baker, L. 2018. Pyeongchang's supposed 'Peace Olympics' are proving to be a
tough sell. [online] The Independent. Available at:

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https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/winter-olympics/pyeongchang-2018-winter-
peace-olympics-visa-north-south-korea-a8221671.html [Accessed 16 May 2018].
McBride, J. 2018. The Economics of Hosting the Olympic Games. [online] Council on Foreign
Relations. Available at: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/economics-hosting-olympic-games
[Accessed 16 May 2018].
Preuss, H., 2013. The contribution of the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games to green
economy. Sustainability, 5(8), pp.3581-3600.
The Japan Times. 2018. Organizers and IOC made many mistakes in planning and staging of
Pyeongchang Games | The Japan Times. [online] Available at:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2018/02/25/olympics/winter-olympics/organizers-ioc-made-
many-mistakes-planning-staging-pyeongchang-games/ [Accessed 16 May 2018].