The Event Life Cycle
Discusss about the 2018 Winter Olympics.
The term “event management” refers to the effective combination of innovative and professional skills that are essential for the establishment and distribution of any organized events. Kim and Feamster (2013), defines the term as the application of the project management in order to create and develop massive occasions such as festivals, wedding and the like. The practice involves identification and gathering knowledge of the brand, targeting the audiences, designing the event and the arranging other aspects before the actual event has been launched. The following report focuses on the steps involved in the planning an event or the event life cycle, the planning of the 2018 Winter Olympics.
The term “event life cycle”, not only refers to the program that has been arranged on site and the hard work of the people who are making the program or the event successful but refers to the whole experience. The time taken for the preparation of an event and executing the same depends totally on how complex the event is (Quinn 2013). Less complex and small events require a couple of months of preparation as compared to the larger and more complex events of which the preparation time ranges from six months to around a year. All types of events require a time to prepare before it can be executed. Every successful event has to be planned by considering several key steps (Eddleston et al. 2013).
The event life cycle starts with the introduction of the event and planning of the goals and the budget incurred. The next step involves in the finding and selection of the destination where the event is going to take place. After the destination has been selected, a structure or draft of the event and the costs is framed. Then the designing of the event is done on website and the registration forms are set. The next step involves rehearsing the event so as to ensure that nothing has been missed out and improvements can be made as required. After the details of the event have been determined, invitations are sent to the distribution lists via emails and are made alert that the registration has begun. This is done so as to ensure the number of people who are going to attend the event. After this, all the schedules regarding the vent are finalized and final emails are sent to the people who are invited which generally act as the reminder. This is done to determine the exact number of people who are about to attend the event and to ensure that there are no confusions (Oakil et al. 2014). On the day of the event, surveys are conducted and the people are handed some forms to fill. The survey is considered a part of the planning and data and feedback regarding the event are collected. Lastly, the planners to create a report based on the feedback of the attendees of the event. The feedback is shared with the other staffs and decisions are taken while conducting future events.
The 2018 Winter Olympics
The 2018 Winter Olympics is officially known as the XXIII Olympic Winter Games and commonly as Pyeongchang 2018. It was a multi-sports event held during the winter in Pyeongchang County in South Korea. South Korea was elected first time as the host for the Winter Olympics and hosted the Olympics for the second time after the 1988 Summer Olympics which was hosted at Seoul (Essex and de Groot 2016).
Bidding and election of the host city is the first step towards the formation of the Olympics. In the year 2010 and 2014 the city of Pyeongchang bid to become the host of the Winter Olympics but failed in the final round in the voting of Vancouver and Sochi respectively. The process of bidding and election of the host cities started from 2011 (Muller 2014). Pyeongchang received the final election at the 123rd IOC Session that was hosted in Durban in 2011 and earned at least 48 votes more than the other bidders. It was the third Asian country to host the Winter Olympics after Sapporo and Nagano in Japan in the years 1972 and 1998 respectively. Three cities, Annecy (France), Munich (Germany) and Pyeongchang (South Korea), applied in the bidding process to be elected as the host city of the 2018 Winter Olympics, among which the city of Pyeongchang won the bid (Choi and Kaplanidou 2015). Two websites, named gamesbid.com and around the rings, are specialized in featuring the results or the ratio of the bidding process. These two websites analyses the bidders periodically and accredits them on a score of ranging either from 0-100 or 0-110 respectively.
The formation of the Pyeongchang 2018 was announced by the International Olympic Commission (IOC) on 5th August, 2011 (Thompson, Schlenker and Schulenkorf 2013). After a time period of about four months, on 4th of October, 2011, the IOC declared that Kim Jun-Sun would be heading the event. Another organizing committee, the “Pyeongchang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games” was inaugurated on 19th of October, 2011 (Gold and Gold 2016). The first and the foremost task that were undertaken by the committee were to put forward a master plan for the sports and selection and designing of the venues where the sports were going to take place. The members of the committee visited the city of Pyeongchang for the first time in the month of March in the year 2012, when the construction on the “Olympic Village” was already aloof. After a few months of the visit of the members of the committee, in the month of June, 2012, it was reported that the construction started in a fully fledged way and the connecting rail between Seoul and Pyeongchang had already been established. The committee made the winners in the year 2014 by recruiting the students from different universities of the country of South Korea. The committee also took help of these students to spread the news of the event of the 2018 Winter Olympics through various social networking sites and through the news articles. The designs for the events were finalised and were displayed in the month of September, 2017.
The Formation Stage
The torch march of 24th October, 2017 gave the signal of the staging of the event which started in the European country of Greece and came to an end on the opening day of the event. The relay of the torch marchers entered the country of South Korea on the 1st of November, 2017 and lasted for 101 days. There were about 7500 bearers that represented about the 7.5 million populations of the country and the 2018 runners who acted as the messengers of the arrival of the torch bearers (Davies and Mackenzie 2014). The opening ceremony of the event was staged on 9th of February 2018 at the Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium. Maximum numbers of the outdoor as well as the snow sports were held the county of the city of Pyeongchang (Arnold and Foxall 2014). The indoor events and the skiing event were held in the nearby cities of Gangneung and Jeongseon respectively.
It can be recommended that the steps of the process of event planning have been followed while designing the event of the 2018 Winter Olympics. There were different steps starting from the bidding process to the final staging of the events which was planned and executed in a smooth way. There was a grand opening and closing ceremony in relation to the event. Even the medals which were given to the participants as a token of appreciation were designed in the Korean fashion. This shows the respect of the people towards the country.
Conclusion
The execution of an event involves a lot of effort and several steps. The complexity of the events determines the time required to plan the event. The simple and less complex events require less time to plan, whereas the more complex events require much more time. The 2018 Winter Olympics were planned some years before the actual occurrence of the event. This is because the event involves the people of all the nations of the world to participate in it. The formation of the event started with the bidding and selection of the hoisting city and ends with the actual staging of the event where people of different nations participate.
References
Arnold, R. and Foxall, A., 2014. Lord of the (Five) Rings: Issues at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games: Guest Editors’ Introduction. Problems of Post-Communism, 61(1), pp.3-12.
Davies, A. and Mackenzie, I., 2014. Project complexity and systems integration: Constructing the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics Games. International Journal of Project Management, 32(5), pp.773-790.
Eddleston, K.A., Kellermanns, F.W., Floyd, S.W., Crittenden, V.L. and Crittenden, W.F., 2013. Planning for growth: Life stage differences in family firms. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 37(5), pp.1177-1202.
Essex, S.J. and de Groot, J., 2016. The Winter Olympics: Driving Urban Change, 1924–2022. In Olympic Cities (pp. 84-109). Routledge.
Gold, J.R. and Gold, M.M. eds., 2016. Olympic Cities: City Agendas, Planning, and the World’s Games, 1896–2020. Routledge.
Kim, H., & Feamster, N. (2013). Improving network management with software defined networking. IEEE Communications Magazine, 51(2), 114-119.
Müller, M., 2014. Event seizure: The World Cup 2018 and Russia’s illusive quest for modernisation. Social Science Research Network.
Oakil, A.T.M., Ettema, D., Arentze, T. and Timmermans, H., 2014. Changing household car ownership level and life cycle events: an action in anticipation or an action on occurrence. Transportation, 41(4), pp.889-904.
Quinn, B., 2013. Key concepts in event management. Sage.
Thomson, A., Schlenker, K. and Schulenkorf, N., 2013. Conceptualizing sport event legacy. Event Management, 17(2), pp.111-122.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
