Sports Tourism nostalgia

What Is Sports Tourism?

Sports tourism refers to the traveling of people to another country or region in an effort to participate or observe a sporting event. This kind of tourism is growing rapidly with the global income emanating from it being estimated to be about $600 billion every year.

There are different types of sport tourism such as hard sport tourism which means that the involved tourists are participating in a competitive sport. Soft tourism where the people involved in the sports are doing it for leisure purposes. Others include sports events tourism, active sport tourism, nostalgia and celebrity sport tourism.

Victoria is a busy state especially in terms of sports. There are several events taking place every month and cut across different sports and competitions. For this reason alone, there are always many tourists visiting the different regional towns so as to either participate or watch the sports.

Popular Sports in Victoria, Australia

Cycling – Cycling is a serious sport in Victoria as the events attract some of the best cyclists and large spectator crowds interested in witnessing the competitions.

Australian Open Tennis Tournament – This is a tennis tournament that takes place in January every year and is the first of the four Grand slams that take place all over the world. Due to the popularity of the game and the tournament, there are players coming from all corners of the earth and the spectators are equally drawn from different countres.

Australian Formula One Grand Prix – There are many Formula One enthusiasts around the world and this is what brings them together in their thousands to watch the Grand Prix in Australia every year.

Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix – Philip Island has become one of Victoria’s famous islands basically because of the location of the Philip Island Grand Prix Circuit which is home to the Australian motorcycle Grand Prix. The circuit features the domestic V8 supercar racing, World superbike Championship, and the all famous MotoGP.

Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival – This is one of the largest horse racing event in the world and also makes it to the list of the largest sports events worldwide. The main race in the carnival is the Melbourne cup with an estimated purse of $6 million. As you can imagine there are large crowds attracted from different countries with more than 700, 000 people visiting the carnival during the event.

There are other sports taking place all over Victoria but these are the main ones.

Benefits Of Sports Tourism

As much as the tourists who visit the state are interested in the sport that brought them there, the towns where the events take place benefit a great deal from the visit. Below are ways in which the tourists benefit the towns they visit:

1. Revenue

Revenue in this case is quite wide because there are a number of avenues in which the sport tourism benefits the towns:

Hospitality

Since the tourists visiting to take part or observe the event need to stay somewhere, the hotels, inns, bed and breakfastes, restaurants, bars and pubs get a lot of customers all through the year as long as there are events being held in one sport or the other. This means that the hospitality industry in Victoria is always in business.