[DevX101]

Hosting the Olympics costs somewhere between US$15-20 billion.

If the goal is really to put a city 'on the map' you could spend less than 5% of that money on an extensive cultural/tourism marketing campaign and have more of an effect. I've yet to meet anyone who's chosen Sochi as a vacation destination.

[iso1631]

Sochi is hardly open for tourism - the closest international market, Europe, requires visas to visit, and not even visas on arrival like countries like Turkey.

Far less hassle for someone from Germany to visit Cairo, Dubai, Nairobi, New York, than to visit Sochi.

Same issue with holding the world cup in 2018.

Give a 30 day tourist visa on arrival and they'd get far more tourists

[Retric]

Winter Olympics locations rarely end up as tourist destinations because people take fewer international vacations to cold locations. Summer Olympics have a better shot, and the stadiums can more often be useful long term. But, it’s still low odds of success.

The best bet seems to be a lesser known location which can use most of the infrastructure and has some non Olympics tourist destinations. Which isn’t a huge list, but there have been a few.

[headcanon]

Not disagreeing, but they can evolve into training meccas for specific winter sports. Lake Placid is a good example - they hosted the winter olympics in 1932 and 1980 (the "Miracle on Ice" year). Currently the town subsists on winter sports athletes traveling there to train, with all the other services to support it.

[rjsw]

> Winter Olympics locations rarely end up as tourist destinations because people take fewer international vacations to cold locations.

I would describe it differently, the facilities used for skiing events are usually already tourist locations, plenty of people take international skiing vacations.

[Retric]

It’s purely a numbers game, ski trips happen but are really a small subset of trips. Meanwhile 1/2 of the Olympic city’s host winter games.

[rjsw]

The venues for Olympic Winter games are by definition where people go for ski trips, they may build varying amounts of infrastructure for non-skiing events but they will have an economy already geared around tourism.

[Retric]

Cortina d'Ampezzo is hosting the 2026 Winter ski events, and yes it’s a ski destination but only has a peak of 40k residents in the winter which is when the Olympic boom would hypothetically take place.

That’s not a huge economy to absorb a short term spike in tourism when it’s focused on a few months out of the year. Worse it’s not like there is a massive untapped surplus of people doing international ski vacations. But don’t take my word for it their are actual studies looking into this stuff that come to similar conclusions.

[rjsw]

Cortina is surrounded by other ski resorts, there isn't a shortage of beds, the one time I skied there I stayed in another town. The Dolomites are also a summer tourist area.

[sandworm101]

>> Winter Olympics locations rarely end up as tourist destinations

Whistler. But then again it was a huge destination before the olympics too.

[Ceezy]

They just need an other Olympic Game to remind people...