Care to share the peer-reviewed academic papers that prove every single host city received no positive impact to tourism? Every city please.
To begin with, the post you were referring to by picard102 clearly stated "
on the whole, the Olympics do not increase tourism
long term," which is a fairly accurate summation of the state of academic research. Frankly most public policy is based on probabilistic assessment, so why insert absolutist straw-men?
Here is the conclusion of one author: "On the other hand, other studies that emphasize the effects of Olympics in building up the brand images of the hosting countries may suffer from the possibility of over-estimating the benefits on tourist visits because they are short-lived. Since there are many aspects in the effects of Olympics, our observation indicates that we need to carefully distinguish the long-run and short-run effects of them. " That same author notes that surveys have shown the the vast majority of the public will forget which cities hosted Winter Games within a decade. It's a pretty close match to the statement you were responding to.
A different author remarked that: "Many event organizers take for granted that events will promote their destination in a way that will stimulate inbound tourism. Studies have documented increased awareness of the host city or nation (Oldenboom, 2006; Ritchie & Smith, 1991) and the awareness of the region’s facilities (Bamossy & Stephens, 2003). Other studies have documented mixed or no results concerning changes in image (Chalip, Green, & Hill, 2003; Mossberg & Hallberg, 1999; Rivenburgh, Louw, Loo, & Mersham, 2003).
A megaevent is a flash in history, so the duration of any increased-awareness effects will be limited. This was illustrated by research on the impacts of the European football cup, Euro 2000, in Belgium and the Netherlands (Oldenboom, 2006). Although the event increased awareness of the host cities, as many as 55% of survey respondents did not even remember the names of the host nations 1 year after the tournament. Only 10% of the respondents in France, Italy, and Spain remembered where Euro 1996 had been hosted 5 years prior. These percentages are striking because they demonstrate that the value of events for host-destination recognition is ephemeral.
Organizers of sport events have only limited control over the factors that influence long-term tourism
. Production of tourism products and services, as well as the image of the destination, is more strongly influenced by the city’s broader environment, including place-marketing efforts that are not associated with the event (see Figure 4). " (Solberg, Harry Arne, and Holger Preuss. "Major Sport Events And Long-Term Tourism Impacts."
Journal Of Sport Management 21.2 (2007): 213-234)
It seems likely that the Summer Olympics do cause a short term bump in tourism visits (~15% in the following year), that result isn't long lasting.
It seems to beggar credibility that anybody would expect a long-run tourism impact. Has anyone here based a trip to Beijing, Athens, Sydney, Barcelona, Atlanta or Seoul on their recent history of hosting an Olympic games? Tourism resources very rarely make note of Olympic histories.
Apparently the whole notion of an "Olympic legacy" is a recent one; hosts as recent as Sydney made no mention of legacy within their bid books. But the growing cost of modern olympics forced the IOC to start emphasizing whatever long term benefits they could scrounge together.