Recently Bei Wang from UT Austin and Rui Wang from Duke University had an interview with Dr. Laurence H. Chalip on topics related to the forthcoming Beijing Olympics.
About Laurence ChalipLaurence Chalip is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also serves as coordinator of the graduate and undergraduate sport management programs. His research focuses on sport marketing and policy. He has published three books, three research monographs and over 50 articles and book chapters. He is Research fellow of the North American Society for Sport Management, and has won two service awards from the Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand. He was the founding Editor of Sport management Review and the Editor of Journal of Sport management. In addition, he serves on the editorial board of five other journals in the field. In 2000, Dr. Chalip was elected to the International Chair of Olympism by the International Olympic Committee and the Center for Olympic Studies. Recently, he became a guest professor in both Capital Institute of Physical Education (2004) and Shanghai University of Sports in China (2006).
Q: Do you think China can gain from Olympic Games?A: Oh yes, of course. I mean, it is really a good time for China to have the games. If you look at China's trajectory of influence in the world today as it emerged from the culture revolution, it is a time when China can take all that has been achieving both economically and politically, and at the same time now being the center of the world's focus of attention for, not just the 17 days during the games, but in the period after. In a way, it is also associated with celebrations. It is a huge opportunity for China, I expect. There are also clearly opportunities, the same kind of opportunities that countries have had with the Games, because of the new relationships formed through the games, it will be used in a long period afterwards.
Q: The Sydney Olympics has been a huge hit. How does the city benefit from tourism?A: Well, it depends. In terms of Sydney, really the goal was not to sell. I mean, if you go to Australia from overseas, there are really two key gateways in Australia. And Sydney is the number one gateway in Australia. So really the issue was to sell Australia, not to sell Sydney. In terms of the effects on tourism, demand was way up after the Olympics games were held, even before the games. Really the tourism effect of the Olympic Games begins a couple of years before the games. Because of more increased salience and attractiveness, it begins to bring people and make people want to come. In the case of Australia, of course, we saw a crash (in tourism). By Olympics, it is very high. But immediately after the event, it drops. And it is not just in Sydney. (Is it called the post Olympic phenomena?) Oh, I don't know if I would call it that. It can happen - it may not always happen. Like I said, things can get in the way. It's a wearing down effect. For the Olympic Games, unless you do something to capitalize on that interest, the challenge you really have is to figure out a way: once you get that new peak, how do you maintain it, not to let it get back down to the baseline. That is a strategic question and you need a plan for that before the event ever takes place. And then of course you can have surprises. So the Barcelonans, for example, were surprised. They actually weren't prepared for the effects they got. But they were pretty quick to capitalize on a lot and they became a very popular conference convention destination. There is a culture that people want to go to. And they never went all back to the baseline, though they did not stay as high they have got. But they stayed up. But, then you get things that can mess you up, like the Sydney case and Athens cases.
Q: Do you have any suggestions for China to leverage the economy with the Games? A: It is not as easy as just sitting down and just simply giving out a recipe. The real challenge is what the objectives are. How would the current market see us? How would we prefer to be seen? And then how can we use the Olympics to get us there? And how can we continue to use Olympics and other things that are going to take place in our country after the Olympics and other things about our country to maintain it? So in other words, the thing you need to know in advance is to be able to formulate these strategies. Those techniques are well known. We know how to correctly do these things. But it is just strategic planning exercise. And it needs to be done at a variety of levels. It needs to be done at multiple levels of tourism organization that provide and promote tourism, which includes everything from your marketing communications to the way you bundle and package to the wholesalers and also the way you work with your service providers. All that needs to be part of a strategic planning. And not just in Beijing – not so regional – there are other co-hosting cities, like Hong Kong, Guangzhou. They should be thinking about what they are going to do with that? There are thoughts about what teams are going to come and train before games, what are you going to do with that. All opportunities create relationships, and all opportunities create media, all opportunities into band and move to shift your brand. That work needs to start years in advance. In this stage, what you can do then is to monitor, what effects help us get what we want, even if you didn't plan for them. Now how to use them as now that we got them? Then you need to have some monitoring going on. You can do that through your international marketing. Most countries do carry on some market research in their key source markets. That might help a little bit.
One of the biggest issues China is going to have during the Olympic Games in 2008 is going to be, the world may think that China closes business. In other words, the Olympic Games are 17 days long, so you've got the other 300 and some odd days in the year. You got all destinations in China, including Beijing, people want to go to. The problem is, what we call the divergent effects, rather than going to China because it hosts Olympic Games, people go somewhere else. You want that! You want people to come even though the games are happening? So one of the issues China is going to face in this year, 2008, if they already haven't dealt with it, is going to be: what do we do to make people want to come to China even though the Games are on, even if they are not coming to the games. It is pretty common. There are tricks for that. The Australians did brilliant. They set up a whole fun games campaign before the games took place, to promote Australia as a destination during the Olympic year. That was one of the reasons why it was so successful. Because, the first people you have to convince are the wholesales, not the tourists. The wholesalers sell to the travel agencies who sale to the tourists. You have to work through the whole channel of distribution to make sure you've done the job.
Q: Beijing has already been a well known destination of tourism. Will its economy and tourism be significantly leveraged by the Olympics? A: I have no data on that. The facts are: they are just like every Olympic game we've had over the last…Presumably you'll have an added influx of tourists. But, your economic impact is really more than just your games. You really need to understand the economy even for the tourism aspect of Olympics by looking at the effects from a few years before to about four years after, because of the added demand you get. And, again, if you get your market correctly, you can think more than just leisure tourists -- you need also think about business tourists particularly, and your meetings, your incentives, you conferences, your exhibitions, etc.
To answer your question, the tourism effects really need to be understood beyond. Not just looking at 17 days - it may still be bigger because the Olympics Games is getting bigger than the last one. That is just the way the Olympics seem to go. But you need look at the before and afterwards. That will depend on a lot of gains on the tourism markets. How effect is marketing for Chinese cities, not just Beijing. Whether the game period itself will be bigger than the past? I am not sure, but probably. Whether or not the six years will be bigger? I've not seen enough evidence that the Chinese are efficiently marketing the progression on capitalizing Olympics.
Q: Are you doing some research related to Beijing Olympics currently? A: We've done a couple of things. Xiaoyan (note: Xiaoyan Xing is a doctoral student supervised under Dr. Chalip), you know her, right? She studied, and I just helped a little bit, in workers – not the volunteers – the employees at kind of low level: what is their experience like working for Olympic Games? We actually never had a good study done in this aspect. She went to get detailed interviews. And we together analyzed the data. We started a study in Shanghai where we also worked with partners of two other universities in Shanghai to look at: could we transfer the knowledge from Australia of how to leverage pre-games training for economic and social benefits. We started that study with the first workshop done about two years ago. What we learned is in the context how to advertise, which probably needed to start earlier, probably needed to work harder in the beginning to get the elite people involved. Part of what we learned is just how hard it is to transfer knowledge from one social political context to another, even though we had Chinese collaborators work on this.
But it was interesting too if you look at the data we've got from China on the workers. For example, the notion of being part of the history is very very important for the Chinese workers. There is a lot of talk about what it means being part of the history: even though the work I am doing is quite mundane, and may be trivial sometimes, I recognize this is part of the big thing which is part of making the history. There is a relationship between: my work is mundane, but I am making the history. Chinese workers clearly recognized that. I think data showed that American workers, working in Los Angeles Olympics or workers in Barcelona have much same thing, but I think that is different from the Chinese cases. What I mean to be part of the history, given both China's incredible 5000 years' recorded history and also China's unawareness of what it means to be reasserting itself in the world after years, those things are unique to Chinese, they change the way you interpret what it means to change history. But they don't change the general concept. I think there is a social political unique in it, but also there is a lot of things in general.
Q: Are you going to Beijing Olympics this summer?A: I originally thought that was going to happen. I am continuing to work in Shanghai, specifically on the leveraging issues in Shanghai rather than in Beijing. It's selecting me. I did not select them and they select me. But I started in Beijing, and then was invited to Shanghai by my colleagues there. We can have very impressive people there and relationships. I do have a possibility to be Beijing. It will depend on a number of factors.
Q: Would you like to say something to Beijing Olympics and China?A: China is going to have a fantastic games, you got one of the best organized committee ever, you've very brilliant people, have greatest story city in the world to have it in, got very hard workers. Be very very aware of the cultural dimensions that are going to be important to make this thing work well. It's going to be a historical landmark. It is also going to be the biggest Olympic Games ever, in terms of number of countries participating, in terms of size of program. What advice could one give, just keep going the way you're going. It is gonna be great! I think it's never too late to start doing more to strategize how you're going to capitalize on the games, from a leveraging point of view, for relationship building, economic leverage, and social leverage.
Thank you!
Author：China Others Time：2008-05-24 From：china daily
