Sports and Event Tourism: A Comprehensive Analysis

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ESSAY ON SPORTS AND
EVENTS TOURISM

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction..................................................................................................................................................1
Discussion....................................................................................................................................................2
Relevant types of event tourists...............................................................................................................2
Tourist’s experiences and motivations....................................................................................................3
Importance of the event for the host country...........................................................................................4
Destination planning (the host country)..................................................................................................6
Managerial issues.....................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................9
References..................................................................................................................................................10

Introduction
In the high competitive environment, the singular largest industry is tourism and it is the fastest segment
connected with physical activities that is referred as sports. The tourism and sports are mixed trends that
are emerged in the present culture. These trends are being influenced through the attitude of human
social, advancement in technology, political and economical cases. However, it is also known that both
tourism and sports are carried out by every country irrespective of national borders. Sports and event
tourism are distinct terms.
The sports tourism is very prevalent and developing phenomenon. It is the leisure based travel that
moves the individual’s outside to their home country for temporary period to take part in physical
activities or to see the physical activities or to adore the attractions linked with physical activities. On
the other side, event tourism is refers as the sequential development that includes marketing, planning
and managing of events as tourist attraction destination. Event tourism is the subset of sport tourism as
sport tourism has wider scope.
In the present essay, the study will cover the scenario of London 2012 Olympics to analyse the
importance of sports and event tourism on the country. The impacts of Olympics will be examined on
mainly three factors that cover cultural, social and economic levels in the host country. The essay will
distribute the entire study in five points covering types of events tourists, experiences and motivation of
tourists, importance of event and destination planning in host country and finally the managerial issues
the country faces in implementing the sports activities.
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Discussion
Relevant types of event tourists
The main objective of event tourism is to develop the favorable picture so that traditional tourism season
such as Olympics can be expanded. Through this the even demand of tourism will increase that will
influence the local and overseas visitors as well. In event tourism there are basically two terms that
needs to be understood before analyzing the types. The first is event tourist that means the tourist travel
away from their home destination for pleasure and business activities by staying overnight at the host
country. Event visitor means the visitors returns the home at the same day only. There are basically eight
types of relevant events for the tourist or visitors that are cultural events, business or trade events,
educational events, private events, sports events, entertainment events, political events and lastly the
recreational events (Van der Wagen and White, 2018).
Cultural events in the country or destination takes place for cultural celebrations that include carnivals,
arts, entertainment, festivals and religious events. Every country has its own cultural phenomenon that
shows the beauty of the country through their culture. For example: the city London takes many cultural
events such as SOULFOOD for the culture the Pop Up, Alumni Network event: cultural Place making
and many more. This type of events puts the positive impacts on the entire UK and the people also gets
influenced to visit at least once to enjoy the cultural attributes while touring.
Business or trade events includes various fairs, markets, sales, trade shows, expositions, publicity
events, meetings and conferences, fund raising events and incentives events. Further interest in value of
tourism for the business events has been very high as almost every city now takes the business
convention event together with the agencies deployed to sell the space and do events bidding. It supports
the country to have greater economic development (Getz and Page, 2016). Educational events take place
by the institutes or business expertise through carrying out seminars, workshops, conferences on the
particular topic. The objective of the event is to spread the knowledge to the youth so that they can
practice the same.
Sports events include professional and amateurs that comes for the sport activities inauguration. In the
event tourism, sports are the big business. The country like UK is mainly based on sports tourism as it
has become to be major platform for economic regeneration in many cities of UK. From the recent
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statistics of Olympics 2012 in London, the city is awarded to be the first city to host the modern games
of three Olympiads. The Olympics was so successful that around 4, 70, 000 travelers visit to UK for
London 2012 Olympics and it accounted for around 3.86 million nights in UK and the visitors spending
was around £709 million. The statistics shows that the Olympics event in sport tourism gives positive
outcomes.
Entertainment event includes various concerts, award ceremonies and performances for arts. The interest
of the tourist has now been developed in this segment also. They come from different countries or cities
to participate or see the concerts. Political events take place to show the presence of political parties and
their power and it generally takes place near the election time including activities of VIP visits, rallies,
Inauguration etc (Wong and Tang, 2016). Recreational events include amusement events, recreational
games and sports activities. This activity creates the interest in the tourist and they like to undertake to
enjoy their leisure times.
Tourist’s experiences and motivations
Tourism is the experience oriented activity and sports are the performance oriented activity and both are
very much similar. The consideration of mutual links in modern tourism sports has role of not only
perpetual but now has been the important topic of tourist stay who becomes the significant participants
in several sports activities. Moreover, sports have become the important motivation of travelling to
certain destinations that are foundation of sports activities. The types of sports activities and the
distinctive set of experience is now been expected by the tourist as their choices are dependent on this
only (Leong et.al. 2015). Further, for tour operators it has become important to include the destination
that includes sports activities accordingly.
It is important to first understand the tourist experiences concepts. Experiences are the lovable or
reminding events that inspire the tourist. The tourist experience is based on two categories i.e. active or
passive. The differentiation of the tourist is now being more concentrated on experience instead of
accommodation at the destination. The major components of tourist experiences are entertainment,
edutainment, aestheticism and escapism experiences. In entertainment experience tourists are generally
passive and they like to enjoy with all the five senses. The edutainment experience in which tourist is
quite active and are desperately in want of learning with entertainment (Veal, 2017). Aestheticism
experience is predominantly passive they seek to immense them in the environment. Lastly, escapism
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includes hyper activity and participation the tourist truly wants to completely involve in tourism
activities.
On the basis of experiences, the tourist gets motivated to participate in sports tourism. The motivation of
the tourist includes interest, needs, personality and objectives and these are directly connected with the
leisure of social psychology. There are various factors that motivate the tourist for sport tourism. The
classical motivational theories are to be used to assess the behavior of tourist for sports. The first is
Murray’s Needs Theory of Personality in which he addressed 12 physiological needs and 28
psychological needs (Antón et.al. 2017). Physiological needs means the requirements related to water,
food, air and security. Psychological needs are in relation to emotional or mental satisfaction.
Maslow’s needs of hierarchical theory in sports tourism shows the relationship between wants and
activity choices. Thus, it is not enough to combine the set of wants with the activity. The similar activity
might be encouraged by different needs at different duration for one person and other side, one activity
might reflect different mean to other individual at the similar time. Irrespective of the relationship
complexity, motivation theory still offers insight that why individual selects to take part in various
activities.
There are other two more theories of motivations such as push and pull. Push theory is the requirement
to match with individual’s motivation and pull factor is the expectations related to the vacations with the
characteristics of specific destination (Caber and Albayrak, 2016). Thus, it is important for the tour
operator’s organizations and government to conduct the system of experience and motivates the tourist
for sport and events tourism to promote tourism in their countries.
Importance of the event for the host country
Hospitality and tourism sector is interlined and dependent on one another. The hotel organizations know
that their profits and sales will not remain consistent in the whole year. It is mainly based on the climate.
The events like sports supports and has drastically impacted the number of tourists and economy of the
country. Sporting event supports the country particularly the hospitality industry of the host country. For
example London state is selected as the host of the event that enables them to enhance their income.
Obviously it is not necessary that income will increase only it can decline also (Getz and Page, 2016). At
few times the profits of the country is limited and even not cover all the expenses incurred by the firm
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on event. Even, many host country develops the stadiums and in shorter period they improve the
infrastructure facilities also in which considerable cost is incurred.
Prior the ancient Olympics was took place between 8th century BC and the 4th century AD. In the present
time, the games costing are so high that it does not complete payoff to even host them. From the
statistics, majority of the states or countries earn very few amount and even countries go bankrupt in
cases (Sporting events, 2018). After the period of 1932, it has taken a half century for the host country to
recover loss to profit positions.
But in present the situation is not true; now the countries are earning huge profits and are receiving the
positive benefits on social, cultural and economics. The picture is very much clear from the event of
Olympics in London 2012 has impacted positively in London. Through this event, London host city has
raised the country profiles which have resulted into positive economic benefits (Preuss, 2015). Though
the city like London is already has strong reputation hosting the Olympics event will not much
influential also. The next thing through events in host country will receive long term investment. The
long term investment will be resulted through preparation of crucial events and the host country will
benefit of improving the sport venues (Advantages of hosting a major event, 2017). The host city will
also invest in transport and infrastructure facilities to offer good services to the tourist. For example:
there was crucial investment in project of public transport across London. This has placed the long
legacy for public and residents of London particularly east London. From the Olympics 2012 London,
the east London has gained the advantage of public transport.
Further, jobs and investments are also resulted through sports events in host country. The objective of
conducting the Olympics in east London was to create the full time jobs of 8000 people and result into
boosting the economic output to £2billion. The sporting event also develops the enthusiasm in the host
country and supports in taking the events for the nation’s health as well. Further, few of the major
sporting events can result into increase in volunteerism that encourages civic virtues. Moreover, though
events in the host country bring economic development, job opportunities and good infrastructure but
with that it also includes high cost risks in security, stadium development, and high taxes and can get
negative publicity also (England, 2016).
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From the view point of London Olympics 2012, the host country UK facing the high debt of 62% and
even though they spend on London Olympics to create the economic recovery. This investment has
capacity to result into high growth and high tax revenues in future.
Destination planning (the host country)
There includes basically few of the steps for destination planning of sport event in host country. The first
planning relates to the event-destination relationship. Destination is required to organize, promote and
manage the sports events for several reasons. In this the event should be considered as the product that
will add the destination attractiveness. The planning will be in relation to the places where the visitors
visit the less and the reason for this is that the tourist who is interested in sports event will come to the
destination for the first time due the event. It will increase the revenue for the hospitality industry of the
host country (Mason, 2015). Further, event will also motivate the daily consistent customers to increase
their stay so as to attend the event which they have not planned in their trip.
The sports event will participate in destination marketing to create the positive image for the destination.
The planning should also relate to consistent reflective image of the tourist destination. It should be the
major marketing tool for all the tourism offices working at local, regional or national. Planning should
include branding and positioning the destination through its products and now the destinations uses the
events for building the image, positioning and its branding tools. Tourism marketers have the duty to
encourage the host destination and to develop the brand equity of destination (The role of sport events in
destination marketing, 2019). Further, in tourism planning brand is supportive to give the competitive
benefit to the host destination. For the tour operators the complexity arises in the procedure of valuing
the brand of the destination but it can be calculated through research and survey in the country.
The second planning relates to destination and event sponsorship. In this the destination that organize
and sport event can react in the manner which is similar to organization that takes event sponsorship as
activity of marketing strategy. Sponsorship is the financial supports to the destination to give the
successful sports event they are planning to launch. It is just the give and take procedure. The people
who sponsor the event of host destination get the strong branding of their products as well. In concern
with the destination marketing, sponsorship can be referred as financial support that destination offers an
events in return for destination brand exposure (Nunkoo et.al. 2018). Moreover, the benefit destination
receives from sport events is exposure of brand and development of reputation.
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The sponsors and destination basically concentrates on the arguments so that both can receive the
benefits from the event. Destination planning is also done to meet the several objectives of the
destination such as spreading public awareness, enhancing target market awareness, increasing
destination image, building positive image, building brand association, modify public perceptions,
increasing the involvement of community, stimulate brand preferences, increasing the visits and
competition blocking. Further few of the destinations deliberately makes the event strategy and includes
in the planning so as to generate more visitors, foreign exchange etc. It will also supports in knowing the
potential for the future for events, media exposure and potential for self sufficiency for event (Hinch
et.al. 2016).
These planning will support the destination country where the event will take place. Further, the
planning related to resources should also be done and estimation should be calculated so that excessive
cost is not incurred. Human resources, accommodation facilities, food and restaurants arrangement,
stadium availability and its seating capacities, transportation facilities, foreign exchange dealers and
many other things are required to be considered by the host destination in their planning for any sport
events. This will save the country from incurring the extra cost and investing on the right resources.
Managerial issues
There can be numerous issues for the host country in bringing the sport event. In managing the event the
issues or challenges will arise that can ultimately results in higher risk of failure of the event.
Economic issues: sport event needs the big stadium and there may be possibilities that the host country
did not have much bigger stadium and the facilities included in it. In that case, the country has to invest
lot on the development of stadium to conduct the sports events. In case if the event did not get success
lot of investment will be wasted as once the big amount of GDP is involved. The next issue can be
insufficient resources to manage the event which also involve the cost incurring. Hiring the employees
can be positive and negative both. Positive in the sense more employment opportunities are developed
and negative in the way if the event did not get the success the money paid to the human resource will
act as the burden to the economy (Chelladurai and Kerwin, 2017). Sports events include high cost at one
time and as it is known that event takes place for shorter period and the success is also not guaranteed.
In that case, high cost will bring more burdens directly on the GDP of the country.
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Cultural issues: The sports tourism brings negative impact on the culture of the host country. For
instance: if the sport event did not get the success and meet the benchmark standards that can develop
the negative image in the mind of the tourist for that destination. They will not like to visit that place
again which ultimately deprive the country from tourist resulting negative impact on cultural activities
of the country (Jones, 2017). Environmental issues: The host country in development of infrastructure
cut the natural trees those impacts on the environment and climate of the country. In that case, though
tourism will increase due to sports events and activities but natural resources will be highly impacted.
The concept of sustainable tourism shall be importantly taken into account.
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Conclusion
From the entire study, it can be concluded that sports and events tourism brings positive and negative
impacts both on cultural, social and economical activities of host country or destination. The essay had
covered the important topic like types of events along with tourist experiences and motivational theories.
The study had also reviewed the importance of event for host country by giving the positive highlights
of sports tourism in host country. Destination planning concept had also shown that systematic planning
with event sponsors and destination makes the event successful and progressive that also creates the
potential opportunities for future as well. Finally, the essay had examined the managerial issues faced by
the host country through focusing on sport event activities.
It is also been suggested that proper planning in sport tourism will bring positivity in social, cultural and
economic aspects of host countries that ultimately increases the GDP of the country and creates more
employment opportunities.
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References
Books and Journals
 Antón, C., Camarero, C. and Laguna-García, M., 2017. Towards a new approach of destination
loyalty drivers: Satisfaction, visit intensity and tourist motivations. Current Issues in
Tourism, 20(3), pp.238-260.
 Caber, M. and Albayrak, T., 2016. Push or pull? Identifying rock climbing tourists'
motivations. Tourism Management, 55, pp.74-84.
 Chelladurai, P. and Kerwin, S., 2017. Human resource management in sport and recreation.
Human Kinetics.
 England, S., 2016. Towards an active nation. Sport England, pp.1-46.
 Getz, D. and Page, S., 2016. Event studies: Theory, research and policy for planned events.
Routledge.
 Getz, D. and Page, S.J., 2016. Progress and prospects for event tourism research. Tourism
Management, 52, pp.593-631.
 Hinch, T.D., Higham, J.E.S. and Moyle, B.D., 2016. Sport tourism and sustainable destinations:
foundations and pathways.
 Jones, M.L., 2017. Sustainable event management: A practical guide. Routledge.
 Leong, A.M.W., Yeh, S.S., Hsiao, Y.C. and Huan, T.C.T., 2015. Nostalgia as travel motivation
and its impact on tourists' loyalty. Journal of Business Research, 68(1), pp.81-86.
 Mason, P., 2015. Tourism impacts, planning and management. Routledge.
 Nunkoo, R., Ribeiro, M.A., Sunnassee, V. and Gursoy, D., 2018. Public trust in mega event
planning institutions: The role of knowledge, transparency and corruption. Tourism
Management, 66, pp.155-166.
 Preuss, H., 2015. A framework for identifying the legacies of a mega sport event. Leisure
studies, 34(6), pp.643-664.
 Van der Wagen, L. and White, L., 2018. Event management: For tourism, cultural, business and
sporting events. Cengage AU.
 Veal, A.J., 2017. Research methods for leisure and tourism. Pearson UK.
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