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Chapter 1
An Introduction to Sport and Adventure Tourism
Lisa Delpy Neirotti
World tourism arrivals are projected to grow at 4.3 percent per year and to reach 1.6 billion by 2020. In this same period, worldwide tourist spending is expected to grow at 6.7 percent per year and to reach US $2 trillion (WTO, 2001). One of the fastest-growing areas contributing to these staggering statistics is sport tourism.
Although sport tourism is a relatively new concept in terms of contemporary vernacular, its scope of activity is far from a recent phenomenon. The notion of people traveling to participate and watch sport dates back to the ancient Olympic Games, and the practice of stimulating tourism through sport has existed for over a century. Within the past five years, however, sport and tourism professionals have begun to realize the significant potential of sport tourism and are aggressively pursuing this market niche.
This sparks the question of whether sport tourism is a new, recreated, or agglomerated field. For many tourism entities, a travel market focused entirely on participating or watching sport is a unique and exciting concept. For recreational managers, the opportunities and impacts related to noncompetitive sport participation have been recognized for years. Thus sport tourism is considered a redesigned marketing tool. In the sport industry, sport tourism is seen as a way to capitalize on the growth and interest in both noncompetitive and competitive sport by aligning forces with sport, recreation and tourism professionals, and organizations. For instance, the more people that participate at a recreational level, the more sport equipment they tend to purchase, the more likely they are to continue to participate at a competitive level, and their propensity to watch sport may also increase. Ultimately, all of these increases related to participating, competing, and watching sport impact the tourism industry in one way or another.
The purpose of this chapter is to identify and define the different facets of sport tourism and to illustrate how influential this market segment can be, not only for the tourism and sport industries but for local, regional, and national economies.
DEFINING SPORT TOURISM
Broadly defined, sport tourism includes travel away from one's primary residence to participate in a sport activity for recreation or competition, travel to observe sport at the grassroots or elite level, and travel to visit a sport attraction such as a sports hall of fame or water park (Gibson, Attle, and Yiannakis,1997).
Sport, in itself, is defined in various ways and from different perspectives. For example, in North America, the terminology of sport is often narrowly associated with competitive play involving concepts of time, space, and formalized rules (Mullin, Hardy, and Sutton, 1993). Other definitions (Brooks, 1994; Goldstein, 1989; Zeigler, 1984; Chu, 1982), however, provide more comprehensive interpretations incorporating noncompetitive elements such as recreation and health. The popular international slogan āSport for Allā refers to one's personal engagement in any physical activity, be it passive, such as walking, or highly active, such as playing competitive basketball (Palm, 1991). The word sport is, in fact, a derivative of disport, which means to divert oneself. The word sport carries the original implication of people diverting their attention from the rigors and pressures of everyday life (Edwards, 1973). Although escape for diversion purposes may still be a motivation for a sport activity, sport today employs a far more engaging concept, encompassing both spectators and participants who seek fulfillment of a wide variety of human needs and wants.
Tourism, like sport, lacks a common definition. International organizations, such as the World Tourism Organization (WTO), the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), and the Organization of Cooperation and Development (OECD), have long labored over the task of developing both supply-and-demandāside definitions of tourism. From a demand side, tourists are generally defined according to one or more of the following categories: purpose of trip, time away from home, distance traveled, mode of travel, or geography (domestic, regional, or international travel). From a supply side, both the WTTC and WTO have developed systems for categorizing businesses and organizations depending on whether their revenues are totally or partially derived from tourist spending. Central to all discussions, though, is the acknowledgment that tourism represents an amalgamation of services and goods for a human activity that takes place beyond a specific distance from one's home or place of permanent residence (Heath and Wall, 1992; Inskeep, 1991; Laverty, 1989; Mill, Alstar, and Morrison, 1985; Theobold,1984; Weiler and Hall, 1992).
Due to its universal appeal (McPherson and Curtis, 1989), sport is regarded as the world's largest social phenomenon. Similarly, tourism has been suggested by the WTO, the WTTC (1996), other research organizations, and scholars to be the largest economic activity in the world. The research problem is not which is larger, bigger or greater, but rather to gauge the extent to which they interact and facilitate each other's growth and dimension.
Within the context of this book, sport tourism is presented as a subset of overall tourism, incorporating several tourism subcategories. The contributing categories include adventure tourism, health tourism, nature tourism, spectator tourism, competitive tourism, recreational or leisure tourism, educational tourism, and business tourism.
SPORT TOURISM: THE SUPPLY SIDE
To better understand the supply-side development of sport tourism Kurtzman and Zauhar (1997) have identified five major areas: attractions, resorts, cruises, tours, and events. Following is a discussion of each of these areas.
Attractions
Sport tourism attractions are destinations that provide the tourist with things to see and do related to sport. Attractions can be natural (parks, mountains, wildlife) or human-made (museums, stadiums, stores). General characteristics represented in this core area of sport tourism include visitations to: (a) state-of-the-art sport facilities and/ or unique sports facilities that generally house sports events, such as stadiums, arenas, and domes; (b) sport museums and hall/walls of fame dedicated to sport heritage and to honoring sport heroes and leaders; (c) sport theme parks including water parks, summer ski jumps, bungee jumping; (d) hiking trails developed for exploring nature; and (e) sport retail stores.
Aside from the attraction of Broadway shows and shopping on Madison Avenue, over 50,000 New York City visitors tour Madison Square Garden (Goldwater, 1997). Likewise, the MCI Center in Washington, DC, is positioned as a year-round tourist destination complete with 100,000 square feet of adjoining shopping, entertainment, and dining facilities, a National Sport Gallery, and the Sportcasters Hall of Fame and Museum (Kaetzel, 1997).
There are currently 135 members of the International Association of Sports Museums and Halls of Fame ranging from local museums such as the San Diego Hall of Champions Sports Museum to the International Olympic Museum, Library, and Study Center. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, the International Hockey Hall of Fame and Museum in Toronto, Canada, and the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Tokyo, Japan, attract the most visitorsāeach reporting over 300,000 per year (Cober, 1997).
Although retail stores are not frequently considered sport tourism attractions, the Bass Pro Shop in Springfield, Missouri, is recognized as the number one tourist attraction in Missouri, accounting for 3.5 million visitors per year. This outdoor sport retail outlet measures 350,000 square feet. Visitors travel from across the globe to explore the vast array of sporting goods as well as a thirty-four-feet high waterfall and four massive aquariums, the largest being 30,000 gallons complete with bass and other freshwater fish (Bass Pro Shop, 2002).
Resorts
Sport tourism resorts represent well-planned and integrated resort complexes with sports or health as their primary focus and marketing strategy. In many situations, these vacation centers have high standard facilities and services available to the sport tourist. This is one of the main industries for small countries such as Belize.
The sport tourism resort category includes amenity and destination spas (Spivak, 1997); golf and tennis resorts; water and snow sport resorts (Packer, 1997); and nature retreats with a focus on outdoor adventure and exploration. Generally speaking, these resorts are furnished with state-of-the-art sport equipment and facilities and offer visitors various levels of activity opportunities and educational programs lead by instructors with a great deal of expertise and personal visibility. These resorts do vary, however, extending from high level international standards specializing in specific and highly developed skills to campground services focusing on recreational sporting activities.
Meeting and convention planners have also found sport tourism resorts to be ideal locations. Not only are these resorts attractive to attendees (meeting attendance becomes a sort of reward) but the environment also serves a purpose. For many groups, sport activities have become a very important component of the meeting agenda as they help build camaraderie and team spirit, and offer excellent networking opportunities. Others believe that the relaxed atmosphere of a resort keeps delegates from getting bogged down or frustrated with the meeting and even allows for more open thinkingābad news or change tends to be accepted more readily. āPeople come here for a meeting and they walk away feeling rejuvenated,ā exclaims Andrea Cook, Human Development Manager at Chateau Elan Winery and Resort in Raselton, Georgia (Farris, 1997, p. 13).
The variety of sports offered at a resort also reduces the stress of a meeting planner in terms of planning free-time activities or events for accompanying family members. In fact, some resorts such as the Marriott's Griffin Gate Resort in Lexington, Kentucky, employ an entire recreational department responsible for customizing sports-based events for meetings of all types. Other resorts such as Saddlebrook Resort in Tampa, Florida, have built extravagant sport facilities. The Saddlebrook Sports Village is centered around a 3,300 square-foot, glass-enclosed state-of-the-art fitness center, around which there are soccer and softball fields, one sand and two grass volleyball courts, a regulation-size basketball court, a boccie ball court, and an open-air pavilion that can be used for classes and group activities (Farris, 1997).
An extension of the sport resort category is sport camps. The American Camping Association estimates that there are more than 8,500 day and resident camps in the United States which serve a total of 6 million campers per year. In terms of economic impact, approximately 65 to 70 percent of campers remain in residence and over 500,000 adults are employed by summer camps alone (Coutellier, 1997).
Currently there are over 2,800 youth sport camps and 2,000 adult camps listed on the Kids Camps and Grown Up Camps World Wide Web sites (<http://www.kidcamps.com> and <http://www.grownupcamps.com>). These Web sites as well as others (http://www.peter-sons.com>, and <http://www.us-sportscamps.com>) provide an excellent over...
