What's the tourism legacy of the 2012 London Olympics?
Skift Take
Many of the parties -- from Heathrow to developers -- involved in the London Olympics reached out for help from previous Olympics hosts. Its success both throwing the games and retrofitting after them is due to largely to their willingness not to take anything for granted.
With the Olympics over, London & Partners' former marketing director Martine Ainsworth Wells considers what long-term tourism benefit the Games have left London.
The 2012 Olympic Games provided London with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase the city as a top visitor destination. The Mayor’s international promotional agency, London & Partners, and the Greater London Authority were charged with identifying the threats to and opportunities for tourism and strategically delivering his promotional objectives.
The critical issue facing major event host cities is “displacement”. Visitors avoid cities for a year before, during and after the event due to fears of over-pricing, overcrowding and an unwelcoming atmosphere. When London won the rights to host the Games in 2005, Visit London and VisitBritain initiated a seven-year stretch of extensive consumer research to understand the scale of the threat and to introduce mitigating campaigns in response.
In 2011, Oxford Economic Forecasting estimated that the main threat in the pre-Gam
