Sports Tourism in Australia

Discuss about the Sports Tourism in Australia.

Introduction 

Sports Tourism is travelling for the purpose of watching a sporting event or participating in the sporting event.  Sports tourism may be of three types (a) holidaying for the purpose of sports like golf, skiing etc., (b) going on a vacation to destination which has excellent facilities for sports, although sports might not be the primary purpose, (c) a private holiday where a tourist might go for taking part in sports like beach-volleyball or beach-cricket. This type of tourism is generally tourism for leisure activities or non-commercialized activities. Other types of sports tourism may be tourism for snorkeling, snow -boarding and may include indoor summer ski destinations.

Literature Review     

Sports tourism is growing at a very rapid rate and it impacts the social, economic and environment of the sports event location. The world tourism organization (UNWTO) in 2013 recognized UAE as the fastest growing sports tourism destination with a growth rate of 10.4% (Prabhu and Subramanium 2014)

Sports tourism is an amalgamation of factors like Sports, Festival and culture, Business and of course Entertainment (Getz and Page 2016). The sports tourism industry is a generator of income to the local audience, but it has its own impacts. It has issues on the environment, security and safety of the region and it has effects on the climate change also.

The world rallying championship were held in New-South Wales (NSW) in the years 2009 and 2011. A survey done during these two premier events showed that there is no relation between the sports tourists and the promotional values of such events. It found that the sports that were held at the NSW locations had issues relating to the promotions of the events, even though their was scope for the growth of sports tourism. (Mackellar and Reis 2014).

Olympic games is a big event to study the factors responsible for growth of the sports tourism industry. The 2000 Sydney Olympic games provided an ambient opportunity to study these factors. The study offered a relationship between the host country and the growth of local participation. The study provided that the young people of the hosting country are encouraged to participate in events.  (Veal et.al. 2012).

The conditions of travel and hospitality, at the sports venue is a very important factor (Bunning and Gibson 2016). It is all the more important for the hospitality industry to look into the welfare of the non-event participants. The non-event participants form a bulk of the travelers with the sports enthusiasts. The hospitality of these tourists are an important factor in determining the travel plan of the sports enthusiasts.

Tourism for sports has a seasonal side to it. Sports like skiing, beach volleyball, beach football are seasonal in nature. A survey was conducted to assess the impact of the seasonal variation in the tourist activities and its impact in the alpine region of NSW, Australia (Pegg, Patterson and Gariddo 2012).  The study showed that the tour operators and hospitality industry acknowledged that there is indeed the presence of a skiing related industry in the Australian Alpine region. The hospitality also acknowledged that the fact there is a surge of tourists during the summer season for sports activities. The tourists who flock to the region are the sports enthusiasts, person with knowledge of the sports (coaches) and all supporting staff.

Sports-tourism is not with its social impacts. During the Korean GP is South Korea in 2012 a multidimensional study was conducted. The study a multitude of factors responsible, for the growth, of the sports tourism industry. A sports event attracts a wide variety of sports followers. The development of a sports tourism destination should include a study on the social, economic and environmental factors responsible for the growth of the location. (Kim et.al. 2015).

Research Aim

The aim of the research is to evaluate the factors that matter for participants of sports tourism.

Research Question

The research question for this assignment is as follows:

• Have you previously travelled to any place to watch a sporting event?
• What type of sporting events attract you?
• How long do spend at the sporting destination?

Research Objective   

The objective of the research is as follows:

• To explore the purpose of the tourists in visiting the city.
• To examine the sporting event which attracts, the tourist the most?
• To study the pattern of the tourists staying at the destination.

Research Methodology         

Primary data will be collected from popular sport tourism destination. The data will be collected from the tourists with the help of a survey (refer Appendix for survey questionnaire). Survey is chosen because of its psychometric properties. Surveys previously have been used to adjudge sport tourism (Tomik 2013). The focus on the survey would be access the tourist regarding his purpose of visit, his intended time of stay at the location and his method of planning for the tour. The survey answers would be in a likert scale. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis will be used for evaluating the data. This will give us a measure of the sport tourism taking place at the destination.

Expected Research Outcome 

The study will demonstrate the presence of sport tourism in the destination. It will give an idea into the different touring habits of the tourists. What is the season in which they prefer to visit a particular destination. How long is the intended stay of the tourist? Do the tourist combine tourism and other official activities.  The research will give an insight into the preferences of the people towards staying at hotels or motels, facilities that might be required to develop a sport tourism destination.

Conclusion

The sport tourism industry has grown over the years. This has given a new dimension to the word “tourism.” The fact that sports as an event can be used to benefit tourism is now very much accepted. This has given scope to develop unknown destinations for economic purposes.  They local destinations have developed facilities, imported coaches and persons knowledgeable of sports like snorkeling, golf, scuba diving etc.

References    

Buning, R.J. and Gibson, H.J., 2016. The role of travel conditions in cycling tourism: implications for destination and event management. Journal of Sport & Tourism, pp.1-19.

Gammon, S., Ramshaw, G. and Waterton, E., 2013. Examining the Olympics: Heritage, identity and performance. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19(2), pp.119-124.

Getz, D. and Page, S.J., 2016. Progress and prospects for event tourism research. Tourism Management, 52, pp.593-631.

Kim, W., Jun, H.M., Walker, M. and Drane, D., 2015. Evaluating the perceived social impacts of hosting large-scale sport tourism events: Scale development and validation. Tourism Management, 48, pp.21-32.

Mackellar, J. and Reis, A.C., 2014. World Rally Championships 2009 and 2011 Assessing the tourism value in Australia. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 20(1), pp.17-28.

Pegg, S., Patterson, I. and Gariddo, P.V., 2012. The impact of seasonality on tourism and hospitality operations in the alpine region of New South Wales, Australia. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31(3), pp.659-666.

Prabhu, N. and Subramanian, K., 2014. The impact of sports tourism in the UAE–a case study of the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Tomik, R., 2013. Active Sport Tourism–a survey of students of Tourism and Recreation. Journal of Tourism, Recreation & Sport Management, 1, pp.13-20.

Veal, A.J., Toohey, K. and Frawley, S., 2012. The sport participation legacy of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and other international sporting events hosted in Australia. Journal of policy research in tourism, leisure and events, 4(2), pp.155-184.

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