Sport cycling tourists’ setting preferences, appraisals and attachments

Abstract

Landscapes and settings are important travel motivators, especially for sport tourism events. Understanding perceptions of sportscapes and travel motivations are essential for sport event organizers and destination managers’ to create sustainable and successful sport tourism events and destinations. This paper reports findings from a survey of active sport tourists’ engaged in Bike Fest, a small-scale competitive cycling tourism event held in Banff National Park, Canada during the shoulder tourism season. Enjoyment of Banff's destination attributes (mountains, nature) ranked second to engagement in competition and physical activity, followed by experiencing excitement and stimulation as reasons for visiting. Views on the destination's appropriateness as a site for racing and leisure travel, attachment to the destination, satisfaction with the destination and race venue, and racers’ preferences of other types of race settings were additional variables documented in this study. This paper expands our understanding of the role destination attributes play in active sport tourists’ travel decisions, and inform efforts to establish a sustainable sport tourism event. It examines event participants’ perspectives on the repurposing of a national park as a race event venue and recommends additional study of the intersection of course attributes, place appeal and attachment, competition, and performance as a valuable research direction which will support event and destination development, and visitor experience enhancement.