What are the types of sports tourists?
Sports tourism is a phenomenon that has been actively developing in recent years. Today we offer to talk about the types of sports tourists. What are they and how do they differ? Read on to find out!
Three main types of sports tourists have been identified: participating sports tourists, event tourists and holiday tourists.
Participating sports tourists travel to destinations to play. They may include golfers playing at Royal St. Andreas Golf Club in Scotland, skiers at St. Moritz in Sweden, runners at the Berlin Marathon or surfers in Bali.
Participating tourists or active tourists can be elite professionals or amateurs; the qualification of participating sports tourists is that they are visitors to the host country and are involved in sports. The concept of active sports tourists has been expanded to include rest and relaxation, which is discussed in detail in the following resource https://spaweekendhotell.se/artiklar/casino-och-spa-en-vinnande-kombination/.
Some participating sports tourists play a dual role in the tourism industry. As visiting sports competitors, they require transportation, accommodation and other tourism services, while also serving as an attraction for sports tourists attending the events.
Event-oriented sports tourists are those who travel to a destination to watch others play sports. Examples of events witnessed by tourists (and researched by scholars) range from A to Z: America's Cup to the Open Tennis Tournament. See also The Little League in Pennsylvania, USA. The LLV, held annually in August, is the pinnacle of athletic achievement in baseball for boys under the age of 13. Teams from around the world compete in round-robin and elimination games that attract over 500,000 spectators and are broadcast live worldwide on ESPN. Within a 60-mile (100 km) radius of the city, lodging is sold out. Athletes, coaches and officials are the participating sports tourists in Wilhelmsport for the 10 days of LLU. Parents, friends and relatives of the participants are sports tourists-events.
In European football leagues, teams play home and away alternately each week, those who travel to away games can be considered "day-trippers" or "event tourists". On a larger scale, you can look at the British Open Golf Championship, which is held annually but spread across 10 venues. In 2014 it was held at Hoylake in Liverpool and brought an extra 75 million to the city (Shibli, 2015). This is because tourists from all over the world came to Liverpool.
Celebratory sports tourists travel to destinations to visit halls of fame, museums, stadiums and other places of remembrance. There are numerous sports tourism holiday destinations.
Thousands of people pay their pounds every year to visit an empty tennis center. The National Olympic Stadium of the 2008 Games in Beijing, known as the "Bird's Nest", has become a regular stop on domestic tourist routes and will host the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Games.
In 2017, Camp Nou, the home arena of FC Barcelona, attracted 32 million tourists. This is thanks to the football matches as well as the very popular tours they offer. The club estimates that 10,000 of the average 78,000 visitors per league match are one-time visitors from outside Spain. The announcements on the public address system are in Catalan and the greetings are in English but not Spanish.
The Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, attracts 250,000 visitors each year, 20% of whom are not from the United States. Hillerich & Bradsby, the maker of the iconic Louisville Slugger baseball bat, receives 300,000 paying visitors annually to see the production process in its factory. Table 22.1 provides examples of halls of fame and museums from around the world.
