Building MINDSPACE Theory into Place Making for Mega Event Tourism

When planning for mega event tourism such as the Olympics, cities reorder public spaces and arenas often with a long term vision – legacy. This vision expresses the role of the event in achieving the desired future and goals of the hosting city. The planning process involves not only animating the city for staged spectacles; but also managing how tourism is consumed - the planned and unplanned experience of consumption. Leisure motivated event tourists are seeking unique, personally and socially rewarding experiences.i These experiences may be managed through the context in which people act. By altering the context, people’s behaviour changes; hence the experience may also change. People do not act solely based on rational factors such as facts and figure; but a mixture of rational and irrational factors such as personal experience, emotion, and other fallible reasons.ii People react to surroundings with two thinking systems – reflective and automatic; usually a mix of both.iii This paper will focus on the automatic system that is less well researched. The possible application of MINDSPACE theory to supplement the planning process will be explored. MINDSPACE theory is a checklist of influences on people’s behaviour for use when making policyiv; it has been tested and applied in governmental policy making. By applying MINDSPACE to event tourism planning, it provides a tool for enhancement and assessment. The London Olympics 2012 and other mega events will be used as case studies