BEIJING, April 30, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — At the 2024 Paris Olympics promoted by including France Tourism Development Agency along the Seine River, global audiences witnessed a fantastical night where reality and virtuality intertwined: the moment when athletes cruised on boats, the reflection of the golden Eiffel Tower vines in the river, and visitors waving their arms to trigger exclusive virtual fireworks.
This opening ceremony without walls embodies the symbiosis of technology and cultural heritage—ranging from Beijing Winter Olympics’ industrial legacy at the “Big Air Shougang“, to Paris Olympics’ multi-dimensional tourism economic transformation, and the future sustainable development route of Los Angeles Olympics. The Olympic movement is experiencing a cognitive shift from a “tool for event efficiency” to a “medium for cultural heritage transmission”. These innovations confirm a shared understanding: the symbiotic relationship between technology and the Olympics continues to deepen.
The core challenge for future Olympics is to integrate technological innovation that not only enhances event efficiency but also serves as a bridge for the transmission of cultural heritage.
Beijing 2022: From “Event Landmark” to “Cultural Tourism IP”—The Second Life of Olympic Heritage
The International Olympic Committee defines Olympic legacy as long-term benefits created by the Olympic Games, encompassing both tangible assets like venue facilities and intangible values such as cultural identity. As the first Winter Olympics to systemically plan legacy management after the publication of the Olympic Agenda 2020, Beijing 2022 broke the limitations of hardware construction and explored the integration of cultural heritage and urban renewal. As Liu Xinghua, Director of the Heritage Management Office of Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, stated, “Initially, people focused mainly on hardware facilities, but later they realized that the Olympics could also bring intangible legacies”.
After the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, numerous Olympic venues, with the “Big Air Shougang” as the centerpiece, continued to generate economic vitality through “cultural IP activation + digital technology empowerment.”
As the first Winter Olympic venue to remain permanently after the games, the “Big Air Shougang“, combining its “Dunhuang Flying Apsaras Ribbon” design with industrial heritage, transformed into a year-round operating space. In winter, it hosts professional training and ice and snow experiences, and in summer, it becomes an extreme sports park. It also hosts commercial events and cultural entertainment, stimulating diversified sports economic development in the Shougang Park and the western part of Beijing. The venue has become a model for industrial area revival and has helped Shougang Park become a new landmark for the revitalization of the capital city in the new era.
The National Speed Skating Oval “Ice Ribbon” and Winter Olympic venues in Yanqing and Zhangjiakou further utilize their existing facilities and the Olympic brand value to inherit and optimize Winter Olympic venue legacy. They continue to host high-level ice and snow events and grassroots ice and snow activities, aiming to create a “Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Ice and Snow Sports Destination,” achieving the repeated, comprehensive, and long-term utilization of venues and parks.
According to data, the Winter Olympics led to approximately 346 million Chinese people participating in ice and snow sports. The China Tourism Research Institute predicts that leisure tourism revenue in the 2024-2025 ice and snow season is expected to exceed 720 billion yuan. The typical case of technological empowerment, “Big Air Shougang“, has also become a cultural landmark, evolving into an industrial heritage learning site and extreme sports experience venue.
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Paris 2024: Technology Empowering Olympic Legacy and Driving Sustainable Tourism Economic Transformation
The Paris 2024 Olympic Games have catalyzed the formation of a new tourism economic ecosystem for France and surrounding countries. Traditional tourist destinations such as Paris and Nice continue to attract large numbers of visitors, while some previously less-visited cities that have been granted event hosting rights have now become new tourist hotspots. This diversification of the tourism landscape not only alleviates the reception pressure on popular cities but also offers visitors more varied choices and experiences.
Coinciding with the 60th anniversary of China–France diplomatic relations and the China-France Cultural Tourism Year, Atout France (the French Tourism Development Agency) created the “Olympic Journey” special Chinese-language webpage. This platform provides the latest information, guides, and itinerary planning for Chinese visitors to France during the Olympic season, including tips on visiting classic Olympic venues, exploring the Olympic torch relay route, and discovering trendy activities in the major host cities of the Games.
By focusing on keywords such as “2-hour train travel” and “sustainable tourism”, the “User Behavior Data Mining and Analysis System” tracks tourist search preferences, consumption habits, and itinerary feedback, building a dynamic user profile database to accurately identify tourists’ demands for “slow travel” and “cultural immersion”. The “Personalized Travel Route Intelligent Planning and Recommendation Service Platform” then uses these insights, along with France’s transportation network, cultural heritage density, and sustainability indices, to generate thematic itineraries that balance efficiency with depth.
The coordinated application of these two systems has enabled the creation of several customized itineraries for visitors to France, successfully matching China’s tourists’ preferences with lesser-known destinations such as Provence’s countryside and the Loire Valley castles. For example, cycling routes from the Burgundy vineyards to Michelin-starred restaurants for food lovers, or family-friendly slow travel plans along the southern French coast, have helped boost employment in surrounding regions and stimulate economic growth.
The French Center for Sports Law and Economics (CDES) predicts that the tourism industry of the Ile-de-France region alone could generate revenues ranging from 201 million to 1.236 billion euros during the Olympic cycle. Li Xiaolou, Media Officer of Atout France in China, added, “By leveraging the power of technology, we drive innovation in the industry, continuously optimizing the service experience in China–France cultural tourism and promoting the digital transformation of China–France tourism cooperation, creating mutual economic benefits”.
Los Angeles 2028: A Path to Sustainable Development Through Technology and Cultural Heritage
As the next Olympics after Paris, focusing on sustainability, Los Angeles plans to utilize existing facilities or renovate existing Olympic venues to respond positively to the International Olympic Committee’s sustainable development initiatives. Existing venues such as the Los Angeles Convention Center, SoFi Stadium, Kia Forum, Rose Bowl Stadium, and Long Beach Arena already host various events, which will provide adequate venue support for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, making it more practical in terms of sustainability.
As a typical industrial city, Los Angeles has rich industrial heritage and a strong film culture background. These unique resources are also enough to become the filed of deep empowerment of the “User Behavior Data Mining and Analysis System” and the “Personalized Travel Route Intelligent Planning and Recommendation Service Platform”.
For instance, by using the “User Behavior Data Mining and Analysis System,” Los Angeles can analyze global visitors’ search keywords (such as “Hollywood Olympic link”), consumption preferences (e.g., family travel share and demand), and social media interaction data to construct a dynamic demand map, predict peak tourist flows, and optimize service configurations.
In addition to industrial heritage reuse, Los Angeles can integrate its unique film culture into the Olympic experience, creating more creative and entertaining Olympic events. Through the “Personalized Travel Route Intelligent Planning and Recommendation Service Platform”, tourists can be intelligently guided on routes such as the “Centennial Olympic Corridor”, which connects Rose Bowl Stadium (Olympic venues from 1932/1984) to SoFi Stadium (2028 new event venue), or the “Dream Journey” through Hollywood Universal Studios to the filming location of La La Land at Hermosa Beach. These themed routes will blend the cultural display of the Olympics with Los Angeles’ film and industrial features, offering global audiences a brand new visual feast. This not only drives the city’s sustainable development but also provides visitors with new cultural and historical experiences.
Conclusion
From Beijing to Paris to the upcoming Los Angeles Olympics, the fusion of technology and culture is gradually reshaping the face of the Olympic Games. Future Olympics will not only be arenas for sports competitions but will also serve as global stages for innovation—where technology drives the transformation of cultural tourism, and culture in return enhances the deepening of technology. Olympic heritage will thus transcend physical boundaries and become a digital memory shared by humanity. When Los Angeles takes the torch, it will carry not only the spirit of competition but also a global answer to the question of how “technology can sustain civilization”.
