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The 2012 London Olympic Games

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Introduction

The 2012 London Olympic Games, lasting from 25 July to 12 August 2012, was one of the largest events ever hosted in the UK. During this world-wide sport event, 4 billion people watched the opening ceremonies on television; more than 10,000 athletes from over 200 countries participated; 20 million people visited the city; and approximately $14 billion were generated (Kubo, 2014).
For London and UK, hosting this mega-sport event provide them a great opportunity to boom the tourism industry to stimulate local economy when facing the global economic recession, especially in Europe. Although London didn’t outline specific tourism objective for the Games in its bidding documentation, London clearly stated its tourism objectives …show more content…

Also, DCMS built on Our Promise for 2012, in which the fifth promise was to demonstrate the UK is a creative, inclusive and welcoming place to live in, visit and for business. To achieve this promise, DCMS stated the plan that make the most of the long-term tourism benefits that the Games will bring nationwide (Our promise for 2012, 2015). As the nature of international tourism is exported service and goods, which has a significant proportion of economic outcome in tourism industry, this paper is aimed to analyse the impact of 2012 London Olympic Games on the inbound tourism in London and the UK. The impacts of the 2012 London Olympic Games on inbound tourism can cover a wide range of aspects, including service improvement, infrastructure improvement, star-hotel increase, tourist flows and so on; nevertheless, this paper will only focus on two aspects: overseas visitor arrivals and spending and destination image improvement.

Literature Review

After the 1984 Los Angeles Games showed for the first time that mega-events could produce an economic surplus, mega-sport events, particularly the Olympic Games, acquired central status for city and national government development agendas (Andranovich, Burbank and Heying, 2001). And the appeal of hosting a mega-event, or more specifically a mega-sport event, has grown significantly over the

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