Learn English – Talking about inanimate objects in plural: they or it

To explain the comment which for some reason is not an answer, your soul is "it" because it is an attribute of yourself. If you mention any other attribute of yourself, whether physical (such as a body part) or abstract (such as an ability that you have), you always refer to it as "it." This also applies to your mind, heart (in the physical and non-physical sense), soul, etc., even if it could be said to have a personality or gender. It is not independent of you, therefore it is not a person (in and of itself), therefore it is considered an object for the purposes of grammar.

EDIT: see also this question. If the soul is considered an independent person, such as when describing the soul of someone in the afterlife, then it can receive a gender. In the linked question, the disembodied soul of a dead king is referred to as "he" (and the soul of a queen as "she").

Going by the above, assigning a gender implies personhood in this instance.

There is nothing wrong with the sentence. The subject is locations, which is plural and which is in accord with the verb.

The use of it as the first word in the sentence is a red herring. This is an example of a cleft sentence; it is not the subject.

Plural:

It is the locations that make the tournament special.
→ The locations [are what] make the tournament special.

Singular:

It is the location that makes the tournament special.
→ The location [is what] makes the tournament special.

From Wikipedia:

In English, a cleft sentence can be constructed as follows:

it + conjugated form of to be + X + subordinate clause

where it is a cleft pronoun and X is usually a noun phrase (although it can also be a prepositional phrase, and in some cases an adjectival or adverbial phrase). The focus is on X, or else on the subordinate clause or some element of it. For example:

      It's Joey (whom) we're looking for.
      It's money that I love.
      It was from John that she heard the news.

Furthermore, one might also describe a cleft sentence as inverted. That is to say, it has its dependent clause in front of the main clause. So, rather than: Example:

      We didn't meet her until we arrived at the hotel.

the cleft would be:

      It wasn't until we arrived at the hotel that (or when) we met her.