ABSTRACT
Urban ‘mega-events’ like the Olympics are frequently used to spur tourism flows and pursue urban development goals in the process. They are defined as events with ‘dramatic character, mass popular appeal and international significance’ (Roche 2000: 1).1 These events stimulate temporary tourist economies, but they may also crowd out other tourism activity as non-event tourists avoid temporarily inflated costs and crowds (Porter and Chin 2012; Zimbalist 2015). For example, the London Olympics attracted 11 million visitors (LOCOG 2012: 32), but the United Kingdom’s international tourist count decreased by 5 per cent during the two months of the Games (ONS 2012). Thus rather than relying only on short-term tourism gains, event promoters highlight the role of mega-events as catalysts for local investment. Usually promoted as offering the potential for ‘legacy’, Olympic investments are said to regenerate communities (Smith 2012), to facilitate social inclusion (van Wynsberghe et al. 2013; Pillay and Bass 2008) and to deliver innovations in sustainable infrastructure (Mol 2010).
