Prelims

Forthcoming Volumes

Destination Conscience: Seeking Meaning and Purpose in the Travel Experience

Edited by: Harald Pechlaner, Natalie Olbrich, and Giulia Isetti editing on behalf of EURAC.

Revisiting Sustainable Tourism in Asia: Towards a Better Normal

Edited by: Fernando Martin Y. Roxas, Eylla Laire M. Gutierrez, and John Paolo R. Rivera

The Regenerative Tourism Industry: The Relationship Between Gender Equality, Tourism

Edited by: Geetanjali Sageena and Suneel Kumar

Tourism Innovation in the Digital Era. Big Data and Technological Transformation

Edited by: Marco Valeri

Genesis and Structure of the Book

The book Sport and Tourism: Opportunities to Develop Tourist Destinations aims to provide a comprehensive collection of chapters analyzing how and why interorganizational cooperation between sport and tourism occurs to develop tourist destinations. This book is the result of reflections involving research studies of different nationalities.

The book contains 13 chapters written by 31 authors located in 11 different countries and affiliated with 20 different universities.

The first chapter titled ‘Mapping the Research Trends on Sports Tourism and Sustainability: A Bibliometric Analysis’ is written by Suneel Kumar, Marco Valeri, Varinder Kumar, Sanjeev Kumar and Isha Kumari Bhatt. The aim of this chapter is to examine research trends in sports tourism and sustainability. Sports tourism is a form of travelling from one region to another to attend a sporting event of any kind. Sports tourism is an emerging new category of tourism that has grown rapidly over the past decade. Properly developed and regulated, tourism can help meet the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a sub-sector of tourism, sports tourism contributes to long-term growth in a unique way due to its specific characteristics. Through a bibliometric review of 157 research publications published over the past 19 years (2002–2021) in the research area of sports tourism and sustainability, this study extracts valuable insights from research trends, co-citation and keyword analysis. This study uses the indexed Scopus database to identify the articles published on this topic. The VOSviewer software was used to analyze further upcoming research topics. The results showed that interest in the concept of these subjects increased, especially after 2011 and 2018. This is a very young research area, and the first work was published in 2002; however, very little research has been done in this area since then. Despite significant progress in this research domain since 2010, substantial linkages between theme areas have yet to be discovered. There is a widespread shortage of researchers and publications. Many publications in this area have emerged as a result of commemorating major sporting events or announcing SDGs. Dealing with important research topics, such as sustainable tourism, environmental sustainability, innovation, sports sponsorship and social sustainability, which should be investigated in the future, is an essential contribution to this process.

In the second chapter titled ‘Brand Love as a Trigger of Sport Tourism: A Study in Portuguese Football’ Ana João Peixoto, Vasco Ribeiro Santos and Bruno Barbosa Sousa explore how emotions and brand love affect consumer decision-making in specific tourism contexts (i.e. sports tourism), more specifically the case of professional football in Portugal and (post) pandemic scenario. A qualitative methodology was adopted collecting data from specialists of the phenomenon to be studied (i.e. semi-structured interviews with professionals and managers linked to sports tourism in Portugal) and consumers (i.e. adept-tourist), through a focus group. It is concluded that the feelings of affection and love to brands in sporting contexts (i.e. football) significantly influence the purchase decision by consumers-fans in the Portuguese context, namely with regard to travel to attend competitions (national or international). In this way, the present study is an instrument to support strategy and marketing and sports tourism. A marketing and sports tourism strategy will therefore be central to the success of football brands in the Portuguese context. This reinforces the role of sport intervention as an attempt to make individuals more aware of how to reconcile the practice of tourism and the search for leisure with their passion and loyalty for the football club (i.e. brand love) and feelings of affection towards brands.

In the third chapter titled ‘Sports Tourism in the Covid-19 Era’ Panoraia Poulaki, Antonios Kritikos and Nikolaos Vasilakis focus on the interconnection of sporting events with the development of tourism during the pandemic. Emphasis is placed on the development strategies of sports tourism and the involvement of tourism professionals by offering hospitality services during the stay of visitors in a tourism destination to attend or participate in a sports event. The tourism season due to the spread of COVID-19 has raised many questions to professionals and tourism authorities as how tourism will be enhanced through specific alternative forms of tourism and in particular sporting events. As it is well known sports has been particularly affected by the deadly virus, causing great concern in the international community as international sporting events will take place soon and an appropriate strategic plan must be put in place to deal with this virus. The strategy pursued by most governments of various tourism destinations was to take strict measures to stop the increase in transmissibility and thus to prevent the upward trend of the pandemic. The number of cases contributes to the increased tendency of isolation of the inhabitants of the affected tourism destinations, and on the other hand no particularly important sporting events took place. Previous research has focussed on how sports organizations manage the COVID-19 crisis by proposing new long-term business models for every tourism destination. COVID-19 is a tough test in attracting sports tourists with strong concerns for the economy and society. The originality of this research effort focuses on how popular tourism destinations utilize the combination of the sport sector with the tourism through appropriate strategic positions that will lead their visitors to enjoy a sporting event in peace and well-being during the COVID-19 era.

The fourth chapter titled ‘Progress in Sports and Event Tourism Research: A Review Study’ is written by Shekhar and Marco Valeri. The chapter aims to map the evolution, themes and collaboration pattern in the sports and event tourism research using the fit for purpose software and suggest future research agendas. The review study retrieved 261 articles published in the Web of Science (WoS) indexed journals. The descriptive analysis, consisting of research trends, most influential articles, top contributing authors and most preferred publications was carried out using MS-Excel and Sci2. The knowledge cluster mapping, consisting of keyword co-occurrence network, co-authorship network and Bibliographic coupling network was done using the Open Refine, Sci2 and Gephi. The study finds the literature heavily focuses on the economic impact of such events, the social impact of events, residents' perception of these events and tourism, marketing aspects and sustainability concerns of this typology for the destination and the industry. The study observes an upward trend in the publication on the theme in the current decade and suggests that pandemic-related challenges will be the focus of practitioners in developing and maintaining loyalty in the tourists. The study offers implications for scholars by summarizing the literature and suggesting future research agendas. The study limits itself to literature from a single database.

In the fifth chapter titled ‘Winter Sports Mega-Event Destination Experience: An Experience Economy Model Perspective During the post-COVID-19 Pandemic’ Bob Yi-Chen Duan, Jingjing Dai and Emily Ma explore the winter sports destination experience in the context of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, using the experience economy model (4Es) as the underpinning theory. The chapter presents two main contributions. Firstly, this study extended the 4Es model to the winter sports tourism domain. Secondly, we found new dimensions that expand the model. A two-stage investigation employing an inductive approach was chosen. Stage I adopted an ethnographic method, which collected 25 rich and detailed self-reporting travelling blogs. In stage II, a snowball and purposive sampling consisting of 12 informants was used for the project.

The sixth chapter titled ‘Hiking Tourism in Greece’ is written by Panoraia Poulaki, Stylianos Bouzis, Nikolaos Vasilakis and Marco Valeri. The aim of this research is to highlight hiking tour as a key factor in the development of Greece in the context of tourism development and formulation of a tourism policy plan, which will include several selected actions for the design and management of walking tourism. Also, it aims to highlight the great challenges and opportunities brought by walking tourism. The presentation of the research findings highlights why the management of walking tourism is particularly important to make the ‘paths’ of Greece an important tool and advantage for their tourism. Greece keeps alive the cultural heritage through the customs and traditions that are still part of everyday life. The traditional forms of life and the great architectural and cultural heritage have been preserved by inhabitants who experience the traditions every day. In the case of Greece an important place is occupied by the ‘paths’, masterpieces of our cultural heritage which highlight the history and culture. The combination of the cultural, historical and religious wealth of Greece with the intense interest for hiking can be one of the main factors of their tourism development.

In the seventh chapter titled ‘Assessing the Impact of a Sports Event From Big Data’ Vincenzo Asero and Simona Gozzo explore the event experience from the audience's perspective through a Big Data approach, investigating the links between users and their sentiments, such as attitudes, opinions, views and emotions, expressed on Twitter. The study offers a contribution to understanding how social media activities vary in terms of their function and their influence on a sports event. Studies in tourism and hospitality management have revealed a variety of factors that influence evaluations of the possible benefits from hosting events. In many cases, the benefits lead to new editions of the event, as the over one hundred editions of Giro d’Italia show. Furthermore, social impacts are often used as one of the main justifications for staging and funding future events. Organizers are therefore increasingly focussed on the promotion of positive attitudes among local residents of the hosting places and different stakeholders involved in the events. However, each organizer employs a different methodology and formula to evaluate the outcomes of the event, and it is therefore difficult to compare impacts of one event against another. Numerous authors agree on the important perceived role of sporting events in changing or enhancing the destination image of the host places. In this regard, social media could be useful to enable the faster identification of factors influencing attendance preferences and evaluations. Internet communities are places where fans and supporters get together and develop emotional ties with their favourite team, regardless of geographic locations. However, research has paid little attention to the possibilities of social media for analyzing sports event. Thus, the use of Big Data through social media and digital interactions can provide new insights for creating new sources, beyond traditional sources of data as a natural part of event planning and management.

The eighth chapter titled ‘Profiling Trail Runners by Experience-Use-History, Environmental Consciousness and Travel Carbon Footprint’ is written by Hrvoje Grofelnik, Marko Perić and Nicholas Wise. The chapter seeks to consider what affects sports tourists' travel carbon footprint behaviour in the case study of trail runners. Sporting events are one of the key drivers of tourism and sports tourism is one of the fastest growing segments of tourism demand. As more people travel to actively participate in sporting events, it is important that we understand how participants view environmental impacts. In particular, the travel carbon footprint is usually in the domain of event attendees and depends on their individual choices in terms of how they make their way to an event. Data were collected for this study using a questionnaire distributed to those who participated in the 100 Miles of Istria Ultra-Trail running event in 2021. 209 surveys are analyzed to help us consider a carbon footprint methodology looking at experience-use-history and environmental consciousness. The findings imply that all groups exhibited high levels of environmental consciousness while ‘visitors’ (who are experienced trail runners but have very little event experience) generated the highest carbon footprint.

The ninth chapter titled ‘A Business Network Model for the Development of Cycle Tourism in a Destination’ is written by Vincenzo Asero and Sandro Billi. The chapter analyzes the cycle tourism phenomenon and its contribution to the development of a tourist area in Tuscany. It explores the experience of the project Strade di Siena, which involves over 30 Municipalities, whose leader is the Municipality of Siena. The project leaves the traditional scheme of tourism promotion carried out by public bodies and adopts an organizational model where businesses play a key role. The creation of a formal network recognized by the Italian law strengthens the autonomy of companies in destination management activities. This study supports the argument that cycling may be a tool for promoting sustainable tourism. In addition, it is argued that formal tourism networking amongst companies plays a key role for providing opportunities to combine cycling with the tourism development of a destination. The discussion provides valuable insights to policymakers and stakeholders in establishing a business network model for the building and management similar cycling routes.

The 10th chapter titled ‘Tourist Motivation Factors Towards Health and Wellness Tourism in Malaysia: A Case Study of Marathon Events in Kuala Lumpur’ is written by Nurul Farah Izzah Zailani, Ahmad Albattat, Sin Yee Wong, Mohammad Haziq Md Nazri and Nini Shaliza Mohd Zuraimi. The purpose of chapter is to determine the characteristics that motivate local tourists to visit Malaysia for wellness and health tourism. As a result, identifying the link between health and beauty, self-development, relaxation and relief and escape components and wellness and health tourism is important. Causal research design in experimental research design was applied in this research chapter as it determines cause and effect between the independent and dependent variables. This causal research design absolutely fits in as the design of this chapter consists of background information, knowledge and understanding about a particular issue that is already known or appeared in the literature. Raw data structures and information can be collected which helps the researcher to model the variables' cause-and-effect relationships. In this case, quantitative research was implemented to obtain data and study the hypothesis in order to investigate cause and effect outcomes. Simple random sampling, which is a convenient sampling of the data from 400 tourists, was utilized by the researchers. The quantitative strategy involves distributing questionnaires to visitors who visit Malaysian wellness and health centres. The findings of this study indicated that among the four independent factors, “escape” had the greatest influence. This resulted in a favourable association between service quality and visitor motivating elements for wellness and health tourism in Malaysia. Indeed, the findings offered suggestions for increasing the quality of wellness and health-related services and products. The analysis reveals that many tourists agree that visiting wellness and health services can improve mental and physical health (r = 596) and continued with self-development (r = 576), as well as relaxation and relief (r = 565), all of which leads to pleasure. As a result, the findings show that “escape” has the strongest significant relationship with tourist motivation towards wellness and health facilities (r = 611). Originality of the research – wellness and health products and services – will ensure the best experience and offer great deals and packages to visitors. Escape, followed by relaxation and relief, is the most important motivation for Malaysian wellness and health tourism.

The 11th chapter titled ‘Is Marathon a Sport Tourism Event? The Authentic Athens Marathon’ is written by Evangelia Kasimati and Vincenzo Asero. The aim of the chapter is to give a short overview of the existing literature of the economic effects and social impacts of sport tourism events with emphasis on marathons. A special reference is made to Authentic Athens marathon. This study examines current literature to reach conclusions on the Authentic marathon's impact on Athens sport tourism development. Through this chapter, valuable insights for the Athens marathon are provided that can be useful for past, current and future host cities of marathons. In addition, the findings enhance the existing academic literature on marathons and produce useful information to policymakers and stakeholders who are involved in the organization of a sport event and in particular of the Athens marathon.

The 12th chapter titled ‘Sport Venues as Sport Tourism Destinations: Examining a Dynamic Multilinked Leisure Proposal’ is written by Ourania P. Vrondou. The purpose of the chapter is to highlight the capacity of the sport venues to act as sport tourism destinations in order to face an unsustainable post-event reality that is now widely evident in numerous venues and overall exploits the attractive image of sport events and facilities. Indicators of this tension have been recorded in the present examination that aims to analyze this extrovert new venue behaviour towards generating a sport venue-specific tourism clientele. The analysis aims to reveal those decisive factors needed to base a sport venue tourism initiation mechanism and stimulate research on venue tourism destination making further. Methodologically, certain venue and leisure sector cases identified businesses associated with the provision of hospitality services to sport venues, consultant reports, policy documents and mainly, published theoretical work become the platform to base evidence and indications of this evolution towards a venue tourism-related potential. ‘Case by case’ and documentation qualitative factor analysis serve as instrumental vehicles to provide the crucial factors needed to facilitate the development of sport venue tourism. The analysis indicated the tendency towards sport venues' ‘spectacularization’, advancement of related technology and overall an increasing investment in supporting the venue function beyond hosting sport competition. The results section reveals some decisive factors towards materializing the new venue role of generating tourism flows. The necessity of planning a comprehensive post-event tourism related legacy programme is underlined despite the lack of supervisory mechanisms by sport institutions as well as local authorities that would secure venue visits and create tourism flows locally. Secondly, hospitality and travel partners are engaged to provide the implementation platform that would facilitate a venue-related tourism offer. From sport spectating to a holistic all-inclusive venue visit the study underlines the crucial contribution of the hospitality sector in uplifting the attendance experience. The third identified developmental factor refers to traditional established destinations, and more interestingly the leisure and entertainment sector, appreciating the unique and appealing character of sport investment in attractive competition venues to secure a quality image, extend tourism flows and create new visiting niches such as the vivid example of the City of Las Vegas.

In the 13th chapter titled ‘European Union Managing Tourism and Sports? The Attitudes of EU Citizens on Sports and Physical Activity’ Marian Šuplata examines tourism and sport as relatively newly created EU policies and consequently examine the attitudes of EU citizens to sports and physical activity. Tourism, sports and physical activity represent an important and particularly popular activity related to the daily lives of citizens of EU Member States. The objective of the chapter is fourfold: firstly, it briefly outlines the legal base and the supranational role of the European Commission in managing the sport and tourism policy; secondly, to identify the level of heterogeneity of attitudes of citizens of EU Member States to sports and physical activity, clustered into four groups of countries. Thirdly, it looks at the frequency and levels of engagement in sports and other physical activity. In the fourth stage, the chapter identifies the main motives and barriers of EU citizens to sports and physical activity. Except literary review we used selected, analyzed and processed secondary sources from the European Commission, own author's abstraction of the relevant data, along with calculation and classifications, as well as other relevant secondary data and information processed from the national and European levels.