Sport tourism can be viewed as the amalgam of specific sporting activities, being undertaken by people in various forms of competitive interplay or other interaction, that occur in the places where might be instrumental to the sport and/or tourist experience. It is one of the fastest growing market segments in tourism and travel industry and is receiving increased attention for its social, environmental, and economic effects on destinations. It is estimated that there will be a larger market potential than ever for sport-related tours and tourism. On the other hand, it is well known that tour guides are tourism professionals that lead their guests through the many parts of any destination and they are responsible for planning, organizing, and execution of the tours as a very critical component of the tourism value chain. In this chapter, the basic functions and services of tour guides for sport activities and sport tourism will be discussed and the basic objective is to provide detailed information about this enhancing field of tourism for young generation tour guides.
TopIntroduction
Tourism and sports are two popular human activities that create a great deal of social interactions, economic transactions, travels to other destination etc. Both industries are considerably growing as societies and economies develop worldwide. Depending on this growth, the sport related travels have been becoming one of the fast growing market segments of tourism, and the concept of “sport tourism” has widely been recognized in recent years in order to portray sport-related travels (Gibson, 1998a) and it is considered as a favorable alternative to overcome traditional seasonality problems of tourism destinations (Higham and Hinch, 2002) and as an effective tool for sustainability.
Tourism guidance, on the other hand, is a noteworthy component of travel and tourism industry, since tour guides are the key actors of the tours to unknown or less known places. Traditionally, tourism guidance is extremely significant mission for those who are traveling abroad, unexperienced, having foreign language difficulties, but curious about historical/geographical places and local cultures.
As tourism industry is growing all over the world, new and diverse types of tourism are emerging or some existing tourism activities are gaining more importance than ever before. Although, sport tourism is not a new phenomenon, but it is flourishing over the years and getting more and more popularity. Moreover, among various tourism types, sport tourism is one of the most active and multifarious type of tourism, especially for individual sport participation. Therefore, sport tourists may need more technical, practical and geographical assistance than classical tour participants may have. Their key assistants are the guides who are the specialists in their particular fields.
On the other hand, sport event tourism has their own significance for both sports and tourism sectors. These organizations are the best occasions in order to watch directly popular athletes, teams and players on the ground. For international organizations, thousands of people as spectators from all over the world travel to destinations where the sports events are held. These spectators also need some assistance by tour guides in order to facilitate their travels to the destinations and to learn more about the places they visited.
A brief literature review shows that there are number of studies about sport tourism, whereas no specific study on sport tourism guidance. The well-known authors who studied on sports tourism are Gibson (1998b), Stevenden and De Knop (1999), and Deery et al. (2004). There are also some other studies focusing on various dimensions of this type of tourism such as; sport events tourism (Chalip, 1988; Fairley 2003; Deery, 2004; De Aragao, 2015; Achu, 2019;), sport tourism markets (Gibson et al., 1998) and economic benefits of sport tourism (Hurley, 2018; Mc Bride (2018), active sport tourism (Gibson, 1998a; Cousquer and Beames, 2013; Gibson et al., 2018; Heather et al., 2018), sport tourist behaviors (Hengpoom and Weeraspoon, 2019), sport tourism destinations (Higham 2007), sport tourism development (Hinch and Higham (2019), and active sport tourism motivations (Hodeck and Hovemann, 2016; Kim, 2013; Kirkup and Sutherland, 2015; Neirotti et al., 2001; Rinaldi, 2011). On the contrary to the availability of rich literature on sport tourism, there are quite a few numbers of studies referring the different aspects of tourism guidance. The noticeable authors who have studied in this field could be mentioned as Cohen (1985), Mancini (2000), Ahipasaoğlu (2001), Huang (2010), Oter (2019), Overend (2012), and Ababneh (2017).