Evaluating the Economic Impact of Active Sports Tourism Events: Lessons Learned from Cyprus

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that Major Sport or Mega Sport Events have a huge economic impact and help in promoting sports tourism at the host destination. In fact, many works examine and demonstrate the economic impact of major (passive) sport events, but the importance of active sports events in promoting sports tourism is scarcely examined in the literature. This paper outlines, examines, and critically describes the case study of “Active Sports Events for Tourism”. This case study aims at exploring the economic impact of active sports events, through a major international swimming event performed in Cyprus. The work is performed in the Research-in-Startups local project, which developed a web platform and recommender system dedicated to a niche market (i.e., active sports events) and conducted a survey with a sample of \(N = 51\left( {{\text{out of the}}\,512} \right)\) participants in an international swimming event. The emphasis in this paper is placed on the analysis of the survey results, which demonstrates the economic impact of active sports events and the potential that such events offer to the growth of a niche market; i.e., active sports tourism.KeywordsActive sportsSports tourismEconomic impactWeb platformJEL ClassificationZ32Z21