"Sharing The Energy of Asia From Asian Games 2018"

From cities hosting events such as World Championships to countries and even continents that are competing to host world cups or Olympic Games, events have been used as tools that are beyond mere tourism products to generate additional visits to a destination. 

Indeed, "mega-events" can "yield extraordinarily high levels of tourism, media coverage, prestige, or economic impact for the host community or destination". The primary reason for investing in planning and hosting an event is the promises of economic benefits. 

Events bring with them investments, sponsors, participants and visitors that are expected to leave behind significant direct impacts. In addition, large sport events often serve as catalysts for urban renewal and the development of new infrastructure.

According to Anholt in Moilanen and Rainisto (2009), city branding is a management of destination through strategic innovation and coordination of economic, social, commercial, cultural, and government's regulation.

Kavaratzis and Ashworth (2005) mention that city branding is a concept that is generally practiced by few cities in context of competitions that attract the tourists and investment of environment intensively to promote the regional development. 

City branding is a strategy that gives brand to the city that functions as a tool to introduce or market the potential of region to all stakeholders from local to internationals. 

One of purposes of city branding is to attract the investors' and tourists' attention to develop and market the potential of tourism that is owned. The spectacular opening ceremony of Asian Games 2018 was appreciated and became a means to introduce Jakarta with its various cultures as the Indonesian melting pot.

A recent example of city re-branding is Moscow in Russia with its World Cup 2018 event. Moscow was successful in changing its image as an unfriendly city into an open and more friendly city. 

Moscow also represented a more familiar face of new Russia under President Putin's government. Could Jakarta also re-brand its image into a new one with Asian Games 2018 event? A wish image to be a city which will shine its Asian energy thanks to its infrastructure development and become a comfortable city to live in? Will all those efforts above be able to reduce the negative image of Jakarta? The participants of Asian Games 2018 will decide after the party is over as they are the ones who uses the facilities, whether the new ones prepared specially for Asian Games 2018 or the old ones built before the event.

Despite the minor comments regarding Jakarta's air pollution, people certainly can find unique things about Jakarta that cannot be met in routine life of the city. 

This is a chance to verify what Asian citizens really think about Jakarta which can be monitored through their social media's posts during and after the Asian Games 2018 event.