Let’s take a closer look at mega events and the hospitality industry. These events help with long-term regeneration and can transform a city for the better.
We’ve talked about some events and how important it is to coordinate between different stakeholders. But some mega-events change cities as a whole.
The Olympics are a key example. When the Olympic games are hosted the planning process starts a decade in advance. Cities have to apply to become host cities. They have to put in an application document.
They also need to start building the venues and the Olympic Village where the athletes will need to be housed. In some cities, there will be reorganizations in terms of transport infrastructure. We see that some cities approach this as a vehicle for long-term regeneration-so in other words, a vehicle for long-term change and new prosperity to different areas.
The London 2012 Olympics were a great example of this. They were hosted specifically in East London, an area that was, for a long time, seen as an ugly, polluted, former industrial area and where nobody wanted to build or live. So it was a bit of wasted space in a major city. What the Olympics did was inject a lot of investment in that area.
There was an entire soil cleansing process. All the old industries that were located there had left heavy metals in the soil, creating a very polluted area. The whole area was cleaned up and if you look at it now, it’s almost unrecognizable. None of that investment would have happened had the Olympic Games not come to town.
Sometimes, the event itself is much bigger than the two weeks that it takes place.
You have the Olympic Games. You have the Paralympics. And in principle, then everything is over. But the lasting effects of an event for a city can be much, much more significant.
