Sport Tourism: Hosting a Megaevent

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Tourism and sport alone, are two of the most thriving leisure activities that people enjoy today. Sport tourism has become it's own specialized market, and together provide the opportunity of major financial growth and sustainability (Gibson, n.d.). Hosting a megaevent, is a key tactic in promoting not only the sport, but the city that it resides in. Both risky and profitable, we will further investigate hosting and its components, as well as, sport tourism as a whole. Sport tourism like any market, continues to change and evolve based on internal and external forces.

Playing Host in Sport Tourism

The Power of Playing Host is an article that I found that closely relates to chapter seven from our text book. The article sheds light on sport tourism today, as well as, how to win by hosting, how to score points while doing so, and the key factors in building and engineering success once sport tourism has been implemented (Mendiratta, 2010). Overall, according to Mandiratta (2010), if done properly, becoming a host to a megaevent can result in tremendous gain for the location, followed by a new found legacy within their tourism sector.

Gibson ( n.d. , p. 143) claims, that sport tourism has five themes; time, space, motivation, form of activity, and behavior. Affecting and impacting these themes, are internal and external forces that will continue to shape and change the sport tourism market. Throughout this paper, I will continue to tie in the previously mentioned themes, with a more narrow focus of the sport tourism market; hosting.

Discussion

When looking at behavior as a theme, it is described as distinguishing between active [person t...

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...y” (Higham, 1999, p. 89). Higham makes a good point. If planning is not done strategically and based off of a designated area's characteristics, then it is likely that the outcome will be unsuccessful or even negative. Not all cities are cut out to host, and some need to evaluate when the time is right to host. A fantastic example of timing and it's importance, is the bid for the 2010 World Cup. When South Africa bid in 2004 for host of the 2010 cup, they received the results that changed the host and it's people's lives in such a positive way. The news kick started a six year path to national reconstruction. Not only that, but it isolated the nation from the economic down turn from 2008-2009 because the pre-funded, and pre-committed preparations for the event were already underway and guaranteed, providing thousands of people with work (Mediratti, 2010).

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