Impacts from hosting the Olympic Games on local businesses Literature review

Impacts from hosting the Olympic Games on local businesses - Literature review Example In most cases, the participants are professionals who are appropriately trained and the organizers of Olympic Games are well compensated for their efforts. In preparation for Olympic Games, host countries normally get involved in massive renovation projects that become beneficial to them for many years. It is essential to state that Olympic Games have both positive and negative impacts on the host country and most of these impacts associated with the Games are either social, or economic among others (Theodoros, 2007, p. 12). In most cases, when a country is hosting Olympic Games, there are high expectations by the local businesspersons that they will receive more business due to the coming of spectators to view the events but in some instances, such expectations are not met. For instance, during the recent London Olympic Games, local small business individuals expected an Olympic pump in their business but this was not the case. They claimed that this was just unusual because vendors attended the 2012 Olympics expecting to have fabulous volumes of sales in August, but it was not so. During the opening day of the Olympic Games, local traders registered a 10% decrease and throughout, there had been a 12% weekly and 16% rises in the footfall, in London West End businesses (Dreyer, 2011, p. 11). Most people state that trade has not been as good as some individuals may think and this is because the city appears to have been deserted by a majority during the day. In addition, small business owners felt that there were few tourists in the city willing to spend their money. According to Ed Francis who operates a Hampshire Hog in the western part of London, there has been a slight drop in daytime businesses since the commencement of London 2012 Olympics. The drop in trade has also been associated with the increasing number of local people who choose not to attend the Olympics and decide to take holidays out of the country. This means that local tourists who at times tak e rooms decrease in number (Leggat, 2003, p. 201 - 203). In most cases before the Olympic Games commence, local residents feel that demand for roads and the entire public transport network will be high. As a result, a well-coordinated multi agency is set up to manage such and ensure that people get to their places of work in time. In most instances, Olympic Games led to increase in the need for transport and as a result, it is always necessary to plan to ensure that the local individuals’ daily operations are not affected (Adam, 2005, p. 67). For instance, in London, the local parking and traffic management plans were set up to ensure that spectators were not allowed to park their vehicles near the venues. These steps were aimed at ensuring public safety, promoting efficient operations in the venues, and creating emergency routes. The freight industry was also very busy during the games and despite the fact that most roads were busy during the Olympics, freights always found their way through the challenging operating environment (Weed, 2012, 75-80). Mostly, the town councils are assigned the task of operating lorry schemes to ensure easy and fast delivery. They have always preferred night delivery to avoid late delivery and unnecessary traffic during the day. It is worth noting that games play a significant role in ensuring improvement of the local roads. For instance, in London, there was an improvement at Stratford and the Kings Cross. Furthermore,