Sport Tourism

by Chin Sui Ling A12A069, Eileen Kua Geok Chin A12A090, Lee Ching Loong A12A831, Lee Qin A12A183, Lynette Lee Lai La A12A218, Tay Gui Feng A12A635

Sport Tourism refer to travel which involve either participating or viewing in a sporting event and staying apart form their usual environment. In recent decades sport tourism are moving forward into economic growing sector in the globalization.There are several classifications on sport tourism. Sport tourism can defined as Hard Sports Tourism and Soft Sport Tourism but the other researcher which is Gibson were stated that there three types of sports tourism included Sport Event Tourism, Celebrity and Nostalgia sport.

Tourist destinations tend to experience five distinct stages of growth under free market and sustained-demand conditions. Therefore, the Olympics is familiar to everyone. Olympics consider as a sport tourism and it brings a great success in terms of economics, development and tourism sectors in a country. But what we cannot deny is every product and services also have their life cycle. The olymics also same, before the olymic is organize the country have to well prepare all the equipment and benchmark of sport stadium so that to attract more and more tourist come to participate this festival.

Sport tourism is normally for those who are adored with sport where they will spend the money to travel to the place where the sport is organize. They feel that it is more realistic if there went to the place as sport tourist where they can see the sport activities live.

Tourism Area Life cycle:

Exploration

In this stage few hardy and adventurous people looking for something different in a holiday find a place that is special in terms of its culture, natural beauty, history or landscape.  In 1988,  Beijing there may be no concentrate in tourist services and local people will not be involved in sport tourism money making activities as there dun have any attractive activities that attract the foreign tourist.

 Involvement

In this stage, local people start to notice that there are increasing numbers of people coming to their local area.  They realize that the tourism segment is bring up fortune and they started businesses to provide accommodation, food, guides, and transport to the traveller. When they realize that the Olympic will be held at their place,they will start to involve themself in order to get it success.

Development

Big companies start to see the emerging potential of the area as a tourist resort and therefore start to invest money in the region.  They build large hotel complexes and sell package holidays (a package might include travel, accommodation, food and excursions).  This makes the numbers of tourists swell dramatically and massively expands the number of job opportunities for people in the local region, in both tourist related jobs and in construction and services. They started to aggrandize the area facilities in order to attract more people to visit that place with the particular facility.

Consolidation

In this stage, tourism is now a major part of the local economy but possible at the expense of their developments to the location. The local economy is probably dominated by tourism at this stage, and many local people will make their money from this type of industry.  However, this can remove people from other industries such as farming and fishing and these industries can suffer as a result.  There will be continued building and expansion of the resort but some of the older buildings will start to become unattractive and a lower quality client base might result. The Beijing National Stadium has a consolidation at the tourist life cycle model as many of the sport tourist will went to that place to celebrate the Olympic and feel it authentic.

Stagnation

This stage is the stage or condition of stagnating , or having stopped, as by ceasing to run or flow. The facilities for the tourists may decline as they become old and run down. The numbers of tourists may decline too. The competition from other resorts, rowdiness and a loss of the original features (e.g. if it had a great beach but that is now crowded and full of rubbish) can cause the resort to stop growing.  The number of people going levels off then starts to decline, threatening local businesses and services.

Decline or Rejuvenation

In this stage, the government decide whether to maintain the stadium that held Olympic, this stadium will have chance to be choosen as the Olympic destination again if the sport facilities is complete. In other term, the destination will enter the rejuvenation stage again. If the government decide to us the funds to other aspects rather then make yearly maintainece to the sport stadium. Thus, the stadium will not be a choice to hold Olympic because the facilities do not reach the global standard. As result, the destination will enter the decline stage. As an example, the government of China allocating funds to maintain Beijing National Stadium to ensure that the sport facilities reach the global standard because they seek the opprtunities to boost the national economy while Olympic is holding in China.