The Impacts of the Winter Olympic Games on SPORT Tourism: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Purpose: Sport Tourism is a driving force for sustainable economic development of tourism destinations. The Winter Olympic Games is a catalyst for this momentum. In order to clearly sort out the impacts of the Winter Olympic Games on sport tourism of the host city, this paper employed a systematic review. This study allowed to provide some enlightenment for the development of sport tourism in the host cities of the Winter Olympic Games in the future, and proposed the corresponding reference for the continued research in this field. Method: This paper adopted systematic review, more rigorous than the traditional literature review, to ex-plore the impacts of the Winter Olympic Games on sport tourism in host cities. Through the literature search of selected data, 369 articles in English language was retrieved and finally narrowed down to 17 articles accord-ing to the set research criteria. The information extracted from the remaining articles was used to present the types of impacts the Winter Olympics have had on sport tourism in host cities and in how it impacted. Results: Through the review and summary of the literature, current Winter Olympic Games had both positive and negative impacts on sport tourism in host cities. According to its specific manifestation, this paper classi-fied the impact factors. Positive impacts could be summarized into three parts: improving sport tourism reve-nue, improving city image and promoting urban reform. Negative impacts were mainly reflected in two aspects: the excessive cost leads to excessive burden and the unsatisfied sustainable development sustainable develop-ment. Conclusions: This paper clearly stressed that the Winter Olympic Games had both positive and negative im-pacts on the development of sport tourism in host cities, and further analyzed the aspects in which these im-pacts are found. Based on research results, it proposed the enlightenment on the development planning and ecological environment in order to ensure the sustainable development of sport tourism for the upcoming Bei-jing Olympic Games. It is a pity that there were still some limitations in the research scope and methods, and it hoped that they can be solved in the following research.