Preview of Sports Tourism Industry
People engage in sports for different reasons, some for the health benefits and some for the recreational benefits associated with sports activities. Whatever the reasons people give, it is clear that sports have a way of bringing people together to celebrate their shared interests in different games and as such the connection between sports and tourism is formed. The concept of sports tourism has been in place for a long time but in the past few years, the attention it receives from the media and scholars has led to an increased growth and development of the concept into a major industry with both monetary and non-monetary benefits. Different sectors have in effect taken advantage of these developments in order to accrue the associated benefits. For example, travel companies have taken to offering sports and related adventure holidays and hotel resorts have added sporting activities and facilities to their accommodation packages, among other things (Standeven & Knop, 1999, p. 4).
Sports tourism refers to peoples’ participation in sports activities, whether actively or passively organised for commercial or social reasons in such a way that they require people to travel away from their homes or localities to participate (Weed, 2008, p. 15). Some of the main sporting events associated with sports tourism include the Football World Cup, Olympic Games, motor racing Grand Prix, world cycling events, athletics events such as the world marathon, swimming and surfing events among others. These events usually attract people from different parts of the world and generate huge revenues for hosts nations through different groups involved in planning the events. With the growing interest and investment in the sector, sports tourism is set to take on new heights (Buhalis & Costa, 2006, p. 118).
Introduction
There are different types of sports tourism depending on their purpose, the number and kinds of sporting activities that will be involved, but the focus of this paper is a swimming event around the Roosevelt Island in New York City in concurrence with the New York Marathon later on in the year. The event will last for a day just like the marathon and potential participants will choose whether to participate in both events or participate in one. The participation include the players and spectators as well as instructors who asses the progress according to their interests.
Statement of the Problem
In order to carry out a successful swimming event in the area, additional infrastructure will be necessary, more so in the accommodation and transport sectors for the sports tourists and this may pose a great problem to the event organisers. There is also a disconnect between the policy governing sports and tourism because of their consideration as different entities by policy making institutions and this may bring challenges especially as far as funding the event is concerned. The involvement of corporate sponsors such as companies may also prove difficult considering that most companies are still recovering from the shocks of the economic crisis and may therefore not have large amounts of funds to invest in the event.
Purpose of the Sports Project
The purpose of the project is to bring together participants from different parts of the country and the world to join in the swimming race competition thereby giving them a platform for displaying their talents and interacting with other swimmers and athletes. The event will give competitors will be given a chance to interact with each other as well as with their fans who will come to cheer them. In as much as the event will incorporate the participation of well-known athletes, up coming athletes as well as willing participants will also get an opportunity to participate in different categories created specifically for them.
The event will involve the participation of other stakeholders beside the competitors who will benefit in many ways.They include corporate sponsors for the event, accommodation providers such as hotels and resorts in the area, transports providers and infrastructure developers among others. The corporate sponsors will benefit in that they will get to advertise their products and services via different media available in the event like big screens, posters, billboards and the participants’ sports wear. Accommodation providers will benefit economically from the large number of sports tourists and competitive participants. During the event, the participants will get accommodation from their premises before and after the day of the event. Moreover, transport providers will also gain from the revenues collected from the travel services offered to the visitors during the stay and participation in the sport event. While infrastructure developers will gain from payments made to them to develop necessary infrastructure for the event such as sitting stands around the venue of the event and other podiums as deemed necessary, as well as additional accommodation facilities extra facilities is necessary to cater for additional tourists. Since the event will occur annually, these additional accommodation facilities will be necessary.
Most of the benefits of the event will be monetary, but there will also be non-monetary gains such as interaction among all participants, health benefits as well as recreational benefits as the people attending the event will also get to enjoy the surrounding scenery.
Literature Review
The main problems identified for posing great risk to the success of the event include infrastructure problems and funding. The literature review in this section seeks to reinforce this point of view with supporting evidence for the argument.
Sports and tourism have overtime shown a great deal of overlapping due to some of the common interest associated with their activities. The interrelationship between these two fields depends on the level of interaction that is generated when the two fields are brought together especially in their management. It is thereby necessary for the administration of the two fields to integrate the necessary infrastructure in order to benefit from the advantages that are associated with their operations. This will help minimise largely the inefficient and ineffective use of resources used in successful implementation of the different activities.
A large part of the problems mentioned above result from disconnect between sports and tourism. These two fields were for a long time dealt with as separate fields yet their connection is almost inevitable. In most cases, the sports infrastructure is developed and the tourism infrastructure ignored thereby leading to problems such as those of funding and undeveloped tourism infrastructure. Many people forget that most sporting events attract a worldwide audience and such an audience constitutes tourists as they travel from different parts of the globe with the aim of participating in the events, as either active participants or spectators. According to Elliot & Cohen, transport well developed transport infrastructure is necessary in a region that is to host a sporting event since there is always increased traffic. Different means of transport, such as road, rail and air transport, therefore need improvements in order to cater for this additional traffic. Many people would resort to using public transportation as opposed to private transporters such as chartered companies (2001, p. 5).Transportation becomes a problem in that most of the spectators transportation is not considered thereby leading to shortages during the period of the sporting events. Funding is a problem in that most of the funds are allocated to the active participants of the sports and in the sporting activities forgetting that spectators’ activities will also need funding.
The first of the many accommodation problems that can be associated with sports tourism date as far back as the ancient Olympic Games that took place before the fourth century in Greece. According to Finley and Pleket, (1976, p. 55), people of all walks of life including politicians of the time, peasants, noblemen and athletes went to Greece to watch the games in large numbers so much so that it was thought as being the only single time in that era that so many people had turned up for the same event. With the huge turn up arose accommodation problems and as such most of the participants including the athletes who had to spend their nights in the open. This problem persisted whenever such sporting events took place, until the construction of a hotel to accommodate them ended in the fourth century to cater for their accommodation. The development of infrastructure associated with sport tourism requires huge funding and in most cases such funding has not been availed, and where availed it is mostly used to cater for the requirement of the sporting activities as opposed to the tourism activities associated with such sporting events. Most sports tourists will choose their destinations in consideration of the quality of the destination. Quality destinations provisions significantly depend on effective funding from concerned authorities. Many a times the funding comes from the government sources and private donor support. According to Higham, governments which provide public funding are reluctant in funding the tourism aspects of sports and would rather fund the sports related activities (2005, p. 31). Even though their position seems to be changing, the level of funding they avail is still not enough and therefore the private sector has to come in to fund sports tourism activities.
It is difficult to source for funding for some sports compared to other. For example, rugby, athletics and cricket present greater challenges unlike football that easily attracts necessary funding (Cornelissen, 2005, p. 159). She is also of the opinion that situation gets worse at the lack of coordination between the state authorities charged with the duty of ensuring the success of sports and sports events in different countries. In addition, the authorities should ensure that tourism activities are running smoothly in the regions where sporting events are taking place. From the problems and challenges mentioned above, the events organisers of the swimming race should prepare for similar challenges especially since the event is set to take place during the same time the city will be hosting the New York Marathon. Prior arrangements are therefore necessary to minimise the effects of these challenges on the event in order to ensure its success.
Methodology
The data collected for the literature review is from secondary sources such as journals and books as well as online sources from viable and scholarly websites. This is because these sources provided relevant information needed for the study. The secondary data used in this case is mostly reliable and accurate because the sources are credible in that the authors are credible and their sources of data are credible. The data has been found to be flexible as it deals with a number of different issues, which are necessary in addressing the problem at hand, and it was cost effective to collect since most of the materials were available either from the library or from different scholarly online sites.
The problem with some of the data used is that it is old, though it is relevant in the literature review, more recent data is always preferred as it gives an accurate picture of the problems as they exist in reality. Some of the data used does not completely fit in showing the problem at hand because they do not fit this purpose in the first place. For example some of the data used was meant to show the disconnect between the sports and tourism industry and not necessarily to show the problems that are likely to be encountered by the organising parties of the event that is being planned, which is the swimming race.
Results of the Study
From the study conducted through the literature review, it is clear that little there is about concerning the problems associated with sports tourism. This may be because of few studies conducted regarding the association between tourism and sports and in general sports tourism. It is therefore necessary for more researchers to engage in studies that will fill this gap in research as well as carry out more studies highlighting problems associated with sports tourism. Regarding the problems of infrastructure and funding, the following recommendations require urgent implementation in order to minimise and if possible eliminate these problems for the benefit of sports tourism.
Sector Coordination
There needs to be more coordination between sports and tourism ministries to ensure that they can find the middle ground between these two phenomena in order to benefit from the benefits the occurrence of sporting events bring to different regions and countries (Whittingdale, 2008, p. 32). Weed and Bull are of the opinion that most of the problems associated with sports tourism hail from the fact that these two fields have for a long time been treated as completely separate entities (2009, p. 218). In as much as the benefits associated with sports tourism are monetary, the non monetary benefits are also invaluable and should therefore be taken into consideration. For example when sports tourists visit a certain country or region, they are likely to come back later just to enjoy some of the tourist attraction sites and scenery it has to offer. This will ensure a constant flow of tourists into the region and as such raise the revenue generated from tourism related activities as was the case in the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 (Raj & Musgrave, 2009. p. 90).
Sports Tourism Funding
Funding sports tourism is as beneficial as funding the sports events themselves. This is because the development of infrastructure associated with sports tourism is a long-term project and process, which benefits even the residents of the region in question. For example, funding transport and accommodation infrastructure will mean that no future transport and accommodation problems will occur when such events are taking place in future and the funds, which would cater for the development of such infrastructure, but diverted elsewhere. Such infrastructure also caters for the accommodation of normal tourists and as such even in tourist peak seasons, these buffers against unexpected shortages. In the same way, the fact that infrastructure has already been developed to cater for the tourists expected to attend the New York Marathon means that less will be invested to cater from the additional sports tourists that are expected to attend the swimming race event to be held at Roosevelt Island. This translates to low funding requirements for the infrastructure needed for the event which is easier to source for compared to sourcing for huge amounts of money from both public and private sources.
Economic Benefits
The economic benefits associated with sports tourism are too great to ignore both at the regional and national level and as such the involvement of different stakeholders is necessary (Weed & Bull, 2009, p. 25). It is therefore important for the organisers of different sports events organisers to emphasise this facts to the necessary stakeholders such as the government and the private sector as this will entice them to contribute to the funding of such sports events as well as the tourism aspect. These stakeholders should be reminded that in order acquire these economic benefits they must first invest in making them successful because if the events are not successful, then the revenues generated from them will also be minimal.
Conclusion
From the information presented above, we can deduce that even with the developments thus far, the growth of the sports tourism industry is concerned, there still exists separation between the two fields and this appears as the genesis of the infrastructure and funding problems treated to sports tourism activities. It is therefore necessary for all stakeholders to focus on the benefits attainable to the through the incorporation of the two fields into one so that they can work in bringing them together. This is largely in reference to the economic benefits. The organisers of the swimming event should therefore seek to bring coordination in the two events in order to make their venture successful. Owing to evidence that tourism sports implementation has found success in many areas where it occurs, the swimming race organisers should take advantage of the presence of people from different walks of life who will attend the event. The fact that it will run concurrently with the New York Marathon makes it very marketable. It is also necessary to promote the event and feed into the goodwill of the private and public sectors as far as funding is concerned in order to meet the infrastructure requirements of the event. The approach they take should emphasise sustainability of the event, in order to make the event an annual one and as such attract even more good will since if it happens annually, the monetary and non-monetary benefits will be constant.
Reference List
- Buhalis, D., & Costa, C., Tourism Business Frontiers: Consumers, Products and Industry. Oxford: Elsevier Limited.
- Cornelissen, S., 2005. The Global Tourism System: Governance, Development and Lessons from South Africa. England: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
- Elliot, M., & Cohen, R., 2001. Sports Tourism: Aldo Papone Case Study 2001. [Online]
- Finley, M. I., & Pleket, H. W., 1976. The Olympic Games: The First Thousand Years. New York: Viking Press Publishers.
- Higham, J. E., 2005. Sport Tourism Destinations: Issues, Opportunities and Analysis. Massachusetts: Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann.
- Raj, R., & Musgrave, J., 2009. Event Management and Sustainability. Oxfordshire: CAB International.
- Standeven, J., & Knop, P., 1999. Sport Tourism. Illinois: Human Kinetics.
- Weed, M. 2008. Sport and Tourism: A Reader. Oxfordshire: Routledge Publishers.
- Weed, M., & Bull, C., 2009. Sports Tourism: Participants, Policy and Providers. Massachusetts: Butterworth Heinemann.
- Whittingdale, J., 2008. Tourism: Eighth Report of Session 2007. Volume 1. New York: The Stationery Office.