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PyeongChang Winter Olympics Bobsled Demo
 

For most of us, attending the Olympics feels completely unattainable. Even if you can actually get to the flagship city – then what? The best and most convenient hotels will be booked. The traffic in the city and arranging rides will be overwhelming. Tickets to the best events will be sold-out or if available, will be too costly. If you are thinking all this ... think again. PyeongChang Olympics 2018 could be one of the best ways to experience the Winter Olympics and below are the top reasons why.

Time of year. The Summer Olympics have great appeal because in the summer children are out of school and working parents have more flexibility to schedule paid vacation time. Not so in the middle of February when county schools are in session and colleges having scattered dates for their spring breaks. Combine this with the risk of cold-weather travel disruptions like ice and snowstorms, family attendance will be dramatically less opening up Olympic travel & ticket opportunities for you.

2018 Winter Olympics Logo

Distance from U.S. Considering it takes 18 hours from the west coast and 23 hours from the east coast to fly to Seoul and then another three hours via train to get to PyeongChang, even the most enthusiastic Olympic fans will be thinking twice about attending this one. But if you have the time then get ready because airfare prices are extremely affordable right now (less than $700 on China Airlines from Los Angeles) and the prices for hotel rooms, ground transportation and event tickets are expected to follow suit.

Lower corporate attendance. And, just like the distance and time of the year will impact families, the same goes for executives. Many companies who usually attend the Olympics as part of their customer entertainment programs, are coming up with other ideas. For example, NBC is considering taking advertisers to Jackson Hole, Wyoming instead and the USOC is increasing programs in Park City and Lake Placid while reducing the size of the Team USA hospitality house for PyeongChang. In addition, Intel, the newest $400M sponsor of the Olympics, has decided not to start activations until Tokyo 2020. Again, fewer attendees will open up deal-making on travel and tickets for you.

Early ticket sales have been slow. PyeongChang 2018 had been expecting as many as 600,000 visitors to attend the games in South Korea. However, early ticket sales have been disappointing with less than 23 percent of the tickets sold so far. With lagging sales globally, there is more inventory available than in previous games at this same time. That means getting into top events and scoring great seats will be possible unlike we have ever seen before.

As for the headlines? No recent Olympics has ever been without them (remember Zika?) but the Olympics will go forward and so can you. Winter 2018 could become your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to finally experience this historic sports event that you have dreamed about for so long. For everyone who once thought attending the Olympics was out-of-reach, PyeongChang, which is 6,000 miles away from our shores, has never been closer.

-- Ken Hanscom is COO and Chief Product Officer at InviteManager, a leading SaaS cloud-based platform that manages more than 30 million sports tickets annually for corporate programs, which help companies prove the ROI of their client entertainment programs. Ken is a veteran fan of the Olympics and the recognized expert in ticketing, corporate sponsorships, traveling to and experiencing the Olympic Games. Send emails to kenh@invitemanager.com and follow him on Twitter @KenHanscom.