Sports tourism development and destination sustainability: the case of the coastal area of the Aveiro region, Portugal

Abstract

ABSTRACTThere is increasing awareness of the importance of sustainability in sports tourism. Research in this field is nevertheless still limited and is mostly confined to specific areas such as mega-events. The adoption of sustainable management practices by companies offering sports tourism products has been widely neglected. This paper aims to extend previous research by analysing the adoption of sustainable management practices by small and medium enterprises offering sports tourism products, specifically across five sustainability dimensions – economic, sociocultural, environmental, policy, and technological. The methodological approach used in this study is qualitative in nature. A series of 15 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with company managers offering sports tourism activities in the coastal area of the Aveiro region in the centre of Portugal. The discourses were content-analysed and the findings reveal that these companies have already adopted certain sustainability management practices in the analysed dimensions. They are likely to hire local people, to establish some partnerships and work with other companies (e.g. accommodation providers), to limit the number of participants in each group in order to avoid exceeding the carrying capacity, to involve local communities to some extent, and to use biodegradable products (e.g. fuels). Nonetheless, much still has to be done to increase their sustainable practices. It is important, among other features, to promote the use of a wider variety of environmental and technological practices and to increase awareness both of the relevance of promoting linkages and of avoiding leakages, namely by buying local products. Moreover, it is important to take advantage of the strong potential of sports tourism concerning social cohesion. The paper also identifies a large range of sustainable management practices, covering the five aforementioned sustainability dimensions, which may be useful to the managers of sports tourism companies and for the sustainable development of sports tourism destinations.