Landon Bennett
Management 305
March 24, 2014 WSJ Article #3 Recently Russia spent 51 billion dollars designing an international tourist attraction for the winter Olympic Games. The problem is that the tourist destination is strangely empty. There are numerous store fronts that are empty and unfinished hotel rooms. Sochi built and refurbished 43,000 new hotel rooms, and created a new highway and rail system to ferry stadium size volumes of visitor’s in. it has a giant gondola system that carries spectators to the mountain venues. The Olympic venues at Sochi have mostly won rave reviews. Even though the weather is spectacular, transportation is running smoothly, there is not a lot going on there. Past places that have held Olympic Games have had huge prosperity in months and years after the games had left. Sochi is hoping for that same action to take place with all its slopes, restaurants, bars, and nightlife.
Many think that perhaps Sochi is overbuilt. It houses a giant entertainment center, a mall, skating rink, aqua park with slides, water geysers, bowling alley and 12 swimming pools. They build a $371 dollar amusement park with many roller coasters and thrill rides that stand unused behind locked gates. To start helping the stories, restaurants and resorts generate some inflow, Sochi will host the G-8 Summit in June and the Formula One Grand prix in October. Sochi has a ton of potential just based on its location. It is near the sea, the mountains are not far away and the infrastructure is there. Sochi needs to figure out how to make it a tourist destination. Sochi is hoping that people pick them as one of the best ski resorts in the world.