> Winter Olympics locations rarely end up as tourist destinations because people take fewer international vacations to cold locations.
I would describe it differently, the facilities used for skiing events are usually already tourist locations, plenty of people take international skiing vacations.
The venues for Olympic Winter games are by definition where people go for ski trips, they may build varying amounts of infrastructure for non-skiing events but they will have an economy already geared around tourism.
Cortina d'Ampezzo is hosting the 2026 Winter ski events, and yes it’s a ski destination but only has a peak of 40k residents in the winter which is when the Olympic boom would hypothetically take place.
That’s not a huge economy to absorb a short term spike in tourism when it’s focused on a few months out of the year. Worse it’s not like there is a massive untapped surplus of people doing international ski vacations. But don’t take my word for it their are actual studies looking into this stuff that come to similar conclusions.
Cortina is surrounded by other ski resorts, there isn't a shortage of beds, the one time I skied there I stayed in another town. The Dolomites are also a summer tourist area.
I would describe it differently, the facilities used for skiing events are usually already tourist locations, plenty of people take international skiing vacations.