The Albertville Winter Olympics: Unexpected Legacies – Failed Expectations for Regional Economic Development

Abstract

For many observers at the time, the XVIth Winter Olympic Games, which took place in Albertville, France, in February 1992, were supposed to boost the local economy of the French Alps. Prior to the games, the political and economic discourses insisted on their potential for the development of ski resorts. In a context of both national economic difficulties and leisure ski decline in France, the official position was to consider mainly their positive impact on the general infrastructure of the region and on attracting tourists. These estimations resulted in a particular effort to increase the interest of the games for the press: for instance, the famous choreographer Philippe Decouflé was put in charge of the opening ceremony, acrobatic skiing was added to the official programme, and almost 6,000 journalists were accredited to the Olympic sites. However, according to various private and public reports, the economic impact of these games remained far from the expectations, and even created a very unbalanced situation among the ski resorts involved in the Olympic event.