Sport Tourism Operators: Addressing Issues Identified - Article Example

Sport tourism Special interest tourism operators – management issues World Tourism Organization has definedspecial interest tourism as “specialized tourism involving group or individual tours by people who wish to develop certain interest and visit sites and places connected with a specific subject. Generally speaking, the people concerned exercise the same profession or have common hobby” (Ritchie et al, 2004: 28). In case of special interest tourism, very often the special interest itself plays the major role in making the plan for travel as well as tourism development for a particular destination. Tourism by itself is a leisure product which people consume at the time of their leisure. Since in case of special interest tourism, the act traveling is guided by the special interest only, special interest tourism is very often known to as serious leisure. (Hall and Weiler, 1992; Ritchie, 2004) An interesting feature about special interest tourism like sport tourism is that in this case, tourists have a tendency to ask for several durable psychological benefits as well as long lasting physical benefits. Special interest tourists very often seek several psychological benefits like “self-actualization, self enrichment, recreation or renewal of self, self expression, social interaction and sense of social belonging” (Ritchie et al, 2004: 28). Tourism is a diverse sector and hence an appropriate management is required to successfully coordinate all the components that constitute a particular tourism service. A tourism operator has to provide to its customer foods, drinks, proper accommodation and leisure activities. All with all these, in case of special interest tourism, the providers have to additionally provide some long lasting psychological and physical benefits as mentioned earlier. Hence, appropriate management of tourism is a very complicated issue. A travel organization requires developing some particular purpose, plans and corresponding actions for fulfilling those plans for efficiently managing any kind tourism. Managers of a travel organization need to develop various strategies for the implementation of those plans successfully. Every travel agency requires to build management strategies in three key areas of management – internal resource gathering and allocation, controlling external environment within which the travel agency has to operate, and creating ability for adding value to its action. In case of tourism management, particularly in special interest tourism management, resource planning, be it financial or human resource, a crucial thing this appropriate implementation of strategies. In case of financial resources, it is generally found that in any case of tourism financial resources are very vital to any organization for conducting a quality tour by providing reasonable amount of comforts to all its customers. Hence, it is very necessary to identify the key sources of finance along with the logistics of finance for ensuring that at the time of travel there is appropriate coordination between the expenditure and availability of finance. In case of special interest tourism, like sport tourism, these requirement is essential as the customers of special interest tourism service always have some special needs to fulfill their special interest that has actually motivated them to purchase the service of special interest tourism. (Morrison, 1998; Page, 2003; Pender and Sharpley, 2005) Human resource management is also a very crucial management issue in case tourism as the leisure product of tourism is very often conceptualized as “the skills, service and commitment of a range of human contributors to the experience that they are about to embark upon” (Page, 2003: 258). This kind of conceptualization highlights the fact that human resource is very crucial to a travel agency and it is required to manage with proper care for maximizing the utility of the customers along with minimizing costs involved in customer services. A human resource manager in the industry of tourism needs to plan human resource allocation among several activities, to monitor their activities and to adequately control their activities according to the needs of the clients. (Page, 2003; Pender and Sharpley, 2005) In case of tourism, apart from making proper planning of financial resource management and human resource management, there is one vital factor which need perfect planning for attracting customers. It is planning of destination. While constructing group tours or individual tours travel agency the destination needs to be chooses taking into account prime motive of the tours. Finally another most important management issue regarding any kind of tourism is marketing. To attract customers, an appropriate marketing strategy is required to be undertaken by any travel organization. In case of special interest tourism also implementation of a proper marketing plan is of paramount interest. The marketing strategy should be designed by taking into account a buyer’s psychology. Particularly in case of special interest tourism, a buyer is very much concerned about fulfillment of a range of psychological needs in certain areas. The marketing strategy should take into account all those needs and therefore should be planned in such a way that a buyer can easily connect his or her needs with what is being claimed to be provided by a travel agency. In the era of globalization, competition has increased by manifolds, to survive in the tourism industry sufficient attention has to be paid on marketing to attract different sort of travelers. (Page, 2003; Pender and Sharpley, 2005) From the discussion above it has therefore been found that appropriate planning regarding financial as well as human resources, planning of destination, and marketing of the product are the key management issues that a travel organization has to address with due care. In case of Sport tourism also, all these issues needs to be addressed properly as it is a special interest tourism and to conduct a perfect sport tour all these management issues have to be adequately dealt with for maximizing satisfaction of customers who buy this product not as a means of mere leisure, but with certain specific purpose.   Specific product issues Sports have started to become international affairs of huge media attraction since the early 1960s. Not the attraction of media only, sports have started to attract huge money, political interest and most importantly lot of participants since almost five decades ago. During the same span of time, tourism has also become a field of huge attention and it has started to attract billions of people and money towards it. An interesting fact about the tourism industry is that in the world it is the largest industry. Not only that, it also the fastest growing industry in the world. These two international affairs complement each other and hence there exist a close relationship between the two. Several international sport events are held across the world, attracting large groups of people. Very often many sports events are deliberately held in such a way that they attract huge tourists and therefore generate sufficient amount of income for the local people. (Kretchmarr, 1994; Standeven and Knop, 1999) Sport tourism has become a very prevalent global phenomenon. Different people define sport tourism differently. According to one definition, “sport tourism falls into two categories, travel to participate in sport and travel to observe sport. Therefore, sport tourism may be defined as travel for non commercial reasons to participate or observe sporting activities away from the home range” (Standeven, 1999:12) However, presently tourism with business or any other commercial motives are also being included in the category of sport tourism. Hence, in a more generalized way sport tourism can be defined as all types of involvement, be it active or passive, in activities related to sports. The participation in these activities may be in casual way or in an organized way with some non-commercial motives or some business or other commercial motives. An important aspect about the sport tourism is that an active or passive involvement with commercial or non commercial motive will be regarded as sport tourism only if the activity takes place far away from home or work place.   Today people in huge numbers participates in various sports events or go to several places to watches several sports. It is true that the relationship between sports and tourism has a long history, but their relationship has started to gain huge global attention recently. The number of travel agencies that are now paying significant importance on sport tourism is increasing continuously. In fact, sport tourism has become a special variety of tourist package that the travel companies are offering to the buyers. Numerous travel companies use to advertise several sport and adventure holiday packages to attract customers. The importance of sports in tourism is becoming so large that most of the in travels magazines, in holiday resorts, and in other sorts of advertisement also travel organizations are placing their emphasis on the availability of various attractive sport events. (Bull and Weed, 2004; Kretchmarr, 1994) In modern day, the connection between sport and tourism has become quite symbolic. The relationship between sport and tourism not only implies that sports have helped the industry of tourism in its expansion, tourism is also aiding sports. In fact in today’s world, sport has become a very special part of the industry of tourism. The relationship between sports and tourism has become so interactive that tourism significantly influences participation in sports as well as sports infrastructure. In today’s globalised world, increasing integration of domestic economies with the global economy has made further advancement in the interrelationship of sport and tourism. (Bull and Weed, 2004) With globalization, significant changes have taken place in the international market of tourism which has led to significant increase in the variety of tourist types, in the variety of needs of tourists as well as in the variety of travel patterns. In today’s international travel market, holidays with adventurous sports and activities are increasing recognized as a very important segment. (Standeven and Knop, 1999; Bull and Weed, 2004) In the field of business hospitality, the place of sports is very big. Not only that, organizing sport events are also becoming very profitable as in this globalized world more and more customers are coming to spend their holidays by watching several kind of sports event. With several kind of business tours also, active sports are increasing being associated. (Standeven and Knop, 1999; Bull and Weed, 2004) Some inherent issues involved in sport tourism are correct selection of destination, proper selection of tour timing and other management issues like human and financial resource management, efficient tour planning etc. in case of sport tourism, needs of the travelers are quite different than the usual travelers and hence, these needs are required to be addressed with due care. In this context, one important management issue in sport tourism should be considered. It is crisis management. As far as selection of destinations in sport tourism is concerned, it has been found that selection of destinations is not solely dependent on sporting events. There exist some external factors, like unforeseen man made or natural disasters, which significantly influence staging of particular sport events in particular places which in turn affect several important element of the sport tourism industry. Hence, appropriate crisis management is also very important in case of sport tourism. It is true that it is not always possible to predict occurrence of crisis during any sports, but with appropriate skills and resources it is possible to implement some effective strategies which can help in reducing the degree of negative impacts of these crisis on tourism businesses. (Standeven and Knop, 1999; Bull and Weed, 2004)  Sport tourism operators – addressing issues identified Sport tourism operators have to be efficient enough to identify the special needs of their customers and designing their tour packages according to those needs. There exists various small scale and large scale sport tourism operators in the industry of sport tourism. Today, customers of these operators are not only athletes who participate in some international sports events. Variety of customers that the industry of sport tourism is facing now has increased significantly. There has been a huge shift in the interest of people from participating in high adventure sports to low adventure soft sport activities. Hence, the sport tourism operators are also changing the nature of sports included in their tour packages to attract more and more people. Not only that, there also has been a broad based shift from conventional sport activities towards individualistic sport activities like various health activities which require less physical fitness, and different kinds of extreme sport activities. Hence, the managers of sport tourism operators like Thomsons Holidays, Club Med, Center Parcs etc. along with several other small scale operators have identified these changes in the needs of modern sport tourists and are therefore trying to attract new customers by monitoring the emergence of new kind of sport activities and developing an adequate amount of understanding of the motivations that work behind the increasing amount of participation in thee sports. The managers of sport tourism operators are now also paying good attention on the duration of these sports. (Bull and Weed, 1999; Bull and Weed, 2004) Managers are also now increasingly realizing the need for development of different strategies for alternative and mainstream sports. Different strategies for different types of sports are necessary because nature of participants in different form of sports is also quite different. For example, the athletes who participate in extreme sports are more likely to travel independently rather then in groups. Hence, travel experiences demanded by the extreme sport athletes are different from those of mainstream sport athletes. Hence, planning for sport tourism for extreme athletes needs I be different from that of mainstream athletes. To attract more extreme sport athletes managers are developing required insights into the unique needs of these customers and trying to attract them by special types of promotional messages, unique type of accommodation and different type of transportation. In short, to survive in the niche market of sport tourism operators are planning and marketing their packages according to the needs of customers which have significantly changed from its conventional nature.  (Bull, 1997; Bull and Weed, 2004; Hinch, 2004) References: 1. Bull C. J. and Weed, M. E. 1999. Niche Markets and small island tourism: the development of Sport tourism in Malta. Managing Leisure, 4(2):142-155 2. Bull C. J. and Weed, M. E. 2004. Sports tourism: participants, policy and providers. Butterworth-Heinemann. 3. Bull, P. 1997. Mass tourism in the Balearic Islands: an example of concentrated dependence. In Lockwood D. G. and Drakakis-smith eds. Island Tourism: Trends and Prospects. London: Pinter. 4. Hall, C. M. and Weiler, B. 1992. Introduction. What’s special about special interest tourism? In B. Weiler and C.C. hall (eds) Special Interest Tourism. London: Behaven Press. 5. Hinch, T. 2004. Sport Tourism Development. Channel View Publications. 6. Kretchmarr, A. S. 1994. Practical Philosophy of Sport.   Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. 7. Morrison, A. 1998. Small firm co-operative marketing in a peripheral tourism region, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 10, 5, 191-197. 8. Page, S. 2003. Tourism Management: Managing for Change. Butterworth-Heinemann. 9. Pender, L. and Sharpley, R. 2005. The management of tourism. London: Sage Publication. 10. Ritchie, B. W. and Adair, D. 2004. Sport tourism: interrelationships, impacts and issues. Channel View Publications. 11. Standeven, J. and Knop, P. 1999. Sport tourism. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Read More