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| THE IMPACTS OF BEIJING OLYMPICS ON INBOUND TOURISM TO NON-HOST CITIES IN CHINA——A Case from Yangshuo |
| BAO Ji-gang, XIANG Yi-xian, WU Yong-ying |
| Center for Tourism Planning and Research, Guangzhou 510275, China |
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Abstract As one of the most world-widely influential events, Olympic Games has been an hotspot of tourism researches for a long time due to its great impacts on tourism. However, few researches have been done from the perspective of non-host cities. Taking Yangshuo as a case study, this paper examines the impacts of Beijing Olympic Games on inbound tourist market to China during the early and middle periods of the Games, and discusess the possible situation after the Games. The authors of this paper interview some practitioners in tourism industry and make an in-depth analysis. Conclusions are drawn as follows:Firstly, Yangshuo had experienced a serious depression in inbound tourism as a consequence of the unrest in Tibet on March 14th, the earthquake in Sichuan Province on May 12th in 2008 and the visa policy for foreigners which became rather stricter unexpectedly before the Olympics. The visa policy had a long-lasting impact and restrained the inbound tourists extremely in the middle period of the Olympics. Secondly, the Beijing Olympics did not play much of a role in promoting tourism in non-host cities such as Yangshuo before, during or even shortly after the Games. Some impacts on such cities could only be seen in the long run. This is a phenomenon quite against the optimism held in lots of literatures about Olympics' impacts on tourism. Thirdly, although tourism has been recognized as a very fragile and sensitive industry, tourism enterprises which enjoy good word of mouth are much more robust and could survive better in the depression. Based on the above findings, this paper implies that non-host cities of 2010 World Exposition Shanghai in Yangtze River Delta should not expect too many benefits from the Exposition to tourism.
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Received: 25 October 2008
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2009, Vol. 24 
