Abstract
Active event sport tourists (AESTs) are those tourists who are taking part in organised events as competitors. Each event is held in a particular destination and, as a part of a highly competitive industry, both events and destinations offer an ever-widening range of services, striving to make their visitors satisfied. In order to better understand, conceptualize and manage the AESTs’ satisfaction, the primary research based on a questionnaire survey was conducted on 16 small-scale sports events, collecting 502 responses. Results indicate that six satisfaction categories emerged: four event-related dimensions (staff and communication, event reputation, safety, and facilities and key processes) and two destination-related dimensions (destination offering and destination attributes). Understanding the role of the satisfaction of AESTs in a small-scale sport event creates both scientific and practical contributions, where sport event management and marketing need to consider each of these satisfaction categories in order to design and deliver the best active sport tourism experience.
Highlights
Sport tourism is a social phenomenon arising as a distinct interplay of activities, people and places at a certain time point (Getz, 2008; Weed & Bull, 2009)
Regarding event-related dimensions, this study confirmed that the quality of service strongly depends on skilled staff who keep Active event sport tourists (AESTs) informed
This is not surprising because staff directly interact with AESTs and skilled, responsive and well-mannered staff is found to be a key factor for AESTs’ experiences (Alexandris et al, 2017; Donne, 2009; Du et al, 2015; Howat & Assaker, 2013; Perić et al, 2019)
Summary
Sport tourism is a social phenomenon arising as a distinct interplay of activities, people and places at a certain time point (Getz, 2008; Weed & Bull, 2009). Investigating the satisfaction of active event sport tourists variance explained, ‘staff and communication’, points out the satisfaction with and importance of the basic services focused on staff providing information to AESTs
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