I.

Introduction
Event Management is an important part in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry. Events is
known as visitor attractions, understanding how to manage an event is necessary to get
the fundamental knowledge of managing a tourism attraction, particularly in sports tourism.
Like the life cycle of the development of a destination, event also has Event Life Cycle with
stages from formation to future development. This essay with take a closer look into
Pyeongchang Winter Olympics 2018 event with the application of Event Life Cycle
concept, in order to have a clear understanding about stages of starting, growing and
maintaining a long-term event development of a sport event. The formation, growth and
event hosting stages of Pyeongchang Winter Olympics will be evaluated, followed by plan
of future development of the event site, then, some recommendations to address
stakeholders’ concerns will be introduced.
II. Main body
According to Getz (2008) regarding about Event Life Cycle, there are 4 main stages of the
development of an event including formation, growth, staging and future development.
1. Applying the concept of Event Life Cycle to the Winter Olympics of 2018
1.1 Formation. Ideas and Feasibility.
In 2018, there were 3 candidates cities applying to host Winter Olympics games which are
Munich (Germany), Annecy (France) and Pyeongchang (Republic of Korea). The
International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board will assess the feasibility for
hosting the Games of each candidate city basing on 10 criteria including Government
support, legal issues and public opinion; general infrastructure, sports venues, Olympic
villages, environment conditions and impacts, accommodation, transport, safety and
security, past experiences and finance (International Olympic Committee 2018a). After
long time of assessment and bidding campaign, Pyeongchang city of South Korea was
capable of hosting the Games and was announced by the President of the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) to be the host city of the XXII Winter Olympics Games in 2018
(Olympic 2018a).
1.2 Growth
In this Stage of Event Life Cycle, the event will be further developed by the management
team with detail preparation. The bidding campaign, infrastructural development and all
post-event management plan for the event, as well as event planning and branding
strategies will be carried out. To Pyeongchang Winter Olympics 2018, after being elected
as the host, IOC of Pyeongchang city was busy with preparation activities for the big
event. According to Nancy Park, international media sportman for the PyeongChang
Organising Committee (Carlson 2017), the infrastructure and facilities supported for the
Games was very well-prepared and got approved by IOC, besides, 12 competition venues
for the Games were developed with some modifications and located close to the Olympic
Stadium. The accommodation for athletes during the Winter Olympic Games was also an
important stage of preparation for the Games, one of the Pyeongchang Olympic villages
could house up to 3894 athletes and team officials (Winsor 2018). The transportation
system in Pyeongchang city has been modified to help facilitate the athletics and
spectators’ journeys to the Games with detailed information about the routes (Olympic
2018b). In terms of event branding strategies, the IOC coordinators in Pyeong did a great
job in promoting for the events both domestically and internationally, all means of media is
taken advantage to promote for the events, including worldwide broadcasting, utilising
Olympic channel, strong partnerships with well-known brands (International Olympic
Committee 2018b) Especially, the designing stage of Winter Olympic was significant,
catching the attention of audiences from over the world. The logo of the winter games with
the combination of graphics, colors, and Korean alphabet brought strong impression to
audiences (Dawood, 2018). Besides, the mascot being representative of Korea spirit, the
special designed shaped of torch and medals referencing the heritage and culture of
Korea all contribute to create the event branding for Winter Olympics.
1.3 Staging Stages: Event hosting
Like many other previous Olympics Games, Pyeongchang Winter Olympics Games 2018
was hosted with very detailed schedule planned almost year before the event started. The
Games was made up of 15 sports, schedule of every event was organised from 9
February to 25 February (Independent 2018). During this time, the transportation,
infrastructural facilities and technology solutions have been used effectively to support for
the events. Besides, human resource strategy was carried out effectively with the strong
support from volunteers coming from all over the world, contributing to the huge success of
the Winter Olympics (Olympic 2018c).
2. Future Development Stage of Winter Olympics of 2018
2.1 Plan of future development of the event site
After the huge success from Winter Olympics Games in 2018, Pyeongchang city aims to
further goals in the future, long-term plans for big events hosting are set. The Ministry of
Culture, Sport and Tourism, together with authorities of Gangwon Province, planned to
manage and operate some of the venues going forward from the surplus generated by the
Games (Olympic 2019b). Also, there are some new venues opened and managed for
sport events and future Olympic Games.
2.2 Recommendations to address stakeholder’s concerns.
Although Pyeongchang city has got lots of success after Winter Olympics, some months
after that, the town and event sites were deserted, all the stores, hotels were nearly empty
(Weber 2018). The authority expected to improve the living standards and boost the
tourism in the area after the Olympic Games but it turned out to be unrealistic. Due to the
bad weather and maintenance cost, the Olympic sites had to face the risk of demolishing
and became ghost post-Olympic sites. In order to address this problem, first of all, beside
spending an amount of money to maintain the event sites regularly, the government and
authority of Pyeongchang city can host more events, including a music concerts, fashion
shows, exhibitions in parallel events in other major cities, aiming to maintaining the
sustainability of such events and all year round active mode of the event sites (Olympic
2019c). Secondly, the authority should continue networking and conversation with
International Olympic Committee, the good reputation from past Olympic Games hosting
experience may help them to win other chances to host international events and Olympic
games. Finally, basing on the strength of location and geographic characteristics, the
authority of Pyeongchang city can use deserted event sites after Olympic Games as
venues for winter games and competition for the country, more marketing and promotion
campaigns should be planned and carried out, aiming to maintain sustainable event sites
and solve stakeholders’ concerns about post event management.
III. Conclusion
Applying event life cycle concept into the case study of Pyeongchang Winter Olympic 2018
helps to deeper understand about stages in operating and managing sport events. The
success of Winter Olympic 2018 was the result from non-stop effort from formation stages
of wining rights to host the Olympic Games to preparation stages in 7 years for the
Games. However, the event life cycle of Winter Olympic Games 2018 goes down at the
future development stage due to some difficulties that the area has to face, in order to
address the problems, there are some recommendations and solutions introduced in the
essay.
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