Government lack of support for tourism approaching the London Olympics
It is common knowledge among those of us who have investigated the track record of previous Olympic Games that the headline hype about the games 'boost for tourism' is an empty daydream.
Despite all the evidence of the social costs of such mega-events local Olympic boosters have preferred to focus on the supposed popularity which will accrue to leading politicians in addition to the corporate welfare benefitting property interests and the owners and shareholders of construction firms.
Having decided to proceed with this greedy folly they have been warned that:
"..the social legacies of an Olympic Games will be critically dependent on the ways in which it is embedded into a wider set of strategic, well resourced policy agendas. Its ambitions must be couched in modest terms if it is not to disappoint and organisers need to think laterally about the multiple impacts that can result from such events. At the same time it must not draw investment away from bottom-up, grassroots sporting and community organisations and it needs to build on existing strengths and capacities in the surrounding areas."
Whose Gold Rush? The social legacy of a London Olympics, Mike Raco, After the Gold Rush, IPPR
However the UK tourist industry are becoming alarmed at the lackadaisical behaviour of government ministers.
With the Government providing little to no help, or financial support, it is becoming clear that the hospitality industry itself is going to have to lead the way on tourism for the 2012 London Olympics.
...the bigger picture for the industry is looking ahead to the 2012 Olympics, now that the baton has been passed from Beijing. Funding is quite clearly the industry's main bugbear. As Kurt Janson, policy director at the Tourism Alliance points out, not only has Visit Britain's funding been cut by 18%, but the DCMS has not yet committed any dedicated funding to implement its own tourism strategy.
Submitted by Martin Slavin on Sat, 13/09/2008 - 13:52.
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Olympics tourism
Yes, you'd think no-one ever came to London and the Olympics was a unique opportunity to make a good impression on an unprecedented tide of visitors.
To put it in perspective, overseas visitors expected for the Olympics in London are estimated at around 600,000 - compared with around 1.25 million in an average month. (Visit London's statistics show 15.6m overseas visits for the year 2006). Since non-Olympics tourists will stay away, it seems it will be a below-average month for tourism overall - so why should there be a pressing need for investment in a specific tourism strategy for 2012?
Far from there being an urgent need for London to get its tourist act together, it's clearly doing pretty well as the most visited city in Europe and with overseas visitor numbers showing considerable growth. Probably a substantial proportion of foreign visitors for the Olympics have already been to London before so they'd know what to expect.
I suppose the tourist industry is particularly concerned about 2012 because of the unusual media attention, and the perceived need to turn London into Olympicsville - from the tourism strategy article :
As businesses which aren't official sponsors can't use any of the Olympic brand trademarks, like the word Olympic,logos and so forth - I wonder what this 'rebranding' would consist of?
Whatever it is and whoever paid for it, I can't see how this would do anything for London's tourism industry or the success of the games. Just because Beijing tried so hard at window-dressing doesn't mean it improved visitor's experience - actually many found it off-putting. But the Beijing Games is seen as successful because of the quality of the sport and entertainment and freedom from disasters and major inconveniences, not because of the number of banners or how carefully practised the smiles are. I don't think anyone cares about this stuff.
While good in principle, why should improving hospitality staff language skills be so necessary for 2012 in particular? - we always have loads of foreign visitors in the city and most have at least some English; the Olympics won't be any different.
The harder they work to create a one-off, cleaned-up 'Olympic experience' the more London will diverge from its normal offerings and the more generic and characterless it will be. If people want more of the same they'll move on to the next Olympic location, not back to London.