Beijing Olympic Games, Shanghai World Expo Revelation

After Olympic Games was hosted in Los Angeles in 1984, it began to draw worldwide attention gradually and became a large-sized international event form a pure sports event. Therefore, the Olympic Games brings an increasingly important influence to the host city and its tourism development. As another large-sized international event, Expo, which is part of the tourism industry, expresses new technology, new idea, new concept and attracts people from all over the world to visit it. As the host city of 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing is the capital of China and the center of economy, politics and culture; Shanghai, the host city of 2010 Expo, is also the economic center of China as well as the leader of the economic circle of Yangtze River. Being the host cities of large-sized international events and standing in almost the same level of economic development determine that there must be some lessons that Shanghai could learn from Beijing on the impact to the tourism. Shanghai will definitely benefits from the experiences of Beijing.First, this dissertation focuses on event tourism. After defining and classifying event tourism and describing the relationship between event tourism and urban tourism, it comes to the conclusion that both Olympic Games and Expo belong to large-sized international events. Second, it empirically researches the impact of Beijing Olympic Games to urban tourism according to the theory of event tourism, summarizes the promotion effect and the existing problem in the influence of Beijing Olympic Games to the tourism, and concludes the lessons learned from the angle of the development of urban tourism. Then, it describes the preparation of Shanghai Expo, compares the differences between Shanghai Expo and Beijing Olympics Games, and states the enlightenment from the experience of Beijing in the aspect of the sustainable development of urban tourism. Finally, on the basis of the empirical research of Beijing Olympic Games and the current situation of Shanghai Expo, it proposes some suggestions on fully exerting the impact of Shanghai Expo to the sustainable development of urban tourism in the long term during and after this event.