Sport Tourism market segment

Sport tourism is much more than just one-off sport activities. It can form a unique culture at the destination, enhance long term tourism development and certainly has great economic benefits as one of the fastest growing and more profitable tourism sectors; that is if planned and developed appropriately.

Apart from the direct revenue that high spending sport tourism visitors can bring to the destination, there are also indirect benefits to look for when developing and promoting sport tourism and especially the great potential of favourable word of mouth and increased media attention to sustain and increase a positive destination image. Here are some recent cases of destinations embracing the sports industry in various ways.

Real Madrid Resort Island

One of the world’s biggest and best supported football clubs, Real Madrid, recently revealed more details of its ambitious plan about the world’s first ‘sportainment’ destination on Al-Marjan Island in Ras Al-Khaimah (RAK).

The 50-hectare resort will be the flagship of the Al-Marjan Development and aims to attract one million visitors a year when it is completed in January 2015. RAK had been chosen for the pioneering project due to the Emirate’s location, equidistant between Europe and the Far East, home to half the estimated 300 million fans and followers of the club, according to Perez, President of Real, in an innovative way in which football clubs try to make money.

The first recreational tourism complex built under the Real Madrid trademark will be a comprehensive sporting destination complete with luxury hotels, a marina and amusement park featuring the use of latest technologies such as hologram animations. It will also house a 10, 000-seat stadium, the first in the world to open directly open to the sea, as well as sports facilities, a club museum, shopping mall, private beaches and residential areas.

Perez added: ‘This is a decisive and strategic step that will enhance the strength of this institution in the Middle East and Asia, a key region in which the passion for this club is very apparent and growing. The project may be seen as unusual for a football club, but we feel this will set a trend across the industry as clubs try to find new ways to make money.”