Blog #2

            The Sydney Olympic Park is an amazing example of a site that was initiated based upon an event that would bring in tourism revenue.  Once Sydney won the Olympic bid for the 2000 Summer Olympics on September 23, 1993, construction started construction on multiple arenas and sporting venues to get it ready for millions of fans, athletes, and worldwide attention. Just driving into the Olympic Park, I could tell that this area was erected with the plan to hold large numbers of people in both the sporting arenas and the general groups.  That could be seen in the large open spaces, the train station, and the overall expanse of the grounds. 

            With a price tag of $6.5 billion, the Sydney Olympic Games needed to come a long way to break even.  According to the article by Jill Haynes, between the years 1994-2005, $6.5 million extra will be generated for Australia from the 2000 Sydney Olympics (CP 125).  Looking at the games as a continuous investment in Australia’s largest service export of tourism is crucial.  Because the Olympic games are so heavily televised and publicized, it produced much advertising and education about Australia, which produced a huge tourism boost. 

            In the Tourism Australia article/brochure, they focused on the current base numbers of tourism and how they are going to increase by 2013.  In these statistics, they look at criteria such as marketing, business events, industry developments, and R & D.  The Sydney Olympic Park is a great place to use for events to draw tourists, both domestic and international, in.  With large sporting events, concerts, and potentially business events, the Olympic Park still has the potential to draw many people to Sydney and other parts of Australia. 

            One thing that I was particularly impressed with was the amount of volunteers that helped put the Olympics on because they saved the event $140 million dollars in costs.