Sport Tourism

According to tourism.gov.ph (2010), ‘Sport Tourism is defined as a specific travel outside of the usual environment for either passive or active involvement in competitive sport, where sport is the prime motivated reason for travel and the touristic or leisure element may act to reinforce the overall experience’.

What is economic impact of sport tourism?

From my understanding of the article it’s evident to me that this is simply the revenue coming into the local economy from outside the local economy, for example a foreigner coming to Trinidad and Tobago for a sporting event and spending whether it be their currency or our local currency at the event or in our country.

Economic impact can be calculated using many methods, however there are four general approaches to calculating economic impact:

1. subjective estimates, relying on primarily on expert judgment;
2. aggregate secondary data, involving adjusting comparable estimates;
3. disaggregate secondary data, allowing more in- depth adjustments to better suit the study focus; and
4. primary data- typically visitor surveys and formal economic models. However the key factor in determining the most appropriate step for economic impact calculation is primary and secondary data.

Primary data is information that can be collected specifically for the purpose of your research project. This is specifically tailored to your research however this could be very costly to obtain. This deals with simple questions such as the event type, event duration, age of participants and number of participants just to name a few. Based on the article these questions were used to help in estimating the average economic impact of economy by assuming that expenditure and attendance averages from previous economic impact reports. This method outlines efficient way of estimating total attendance, average daily expenditure and total spending effects. Primary data also offers a procedure by which city planners can utilize basic information as the above-mentioned questions rather than conducting surveys.

Secondary data refers to data that was collected by someone other than the user basically previous research on the same or similar topic. When using this type of data in comparison to that of your primary data collect there are two key factors that should be considered. Firstly, in order to reasonably estimate figures to be considered for the calculation of economic impact the secondary data should be similar to that of primary data and secondly, the level of division available within the study is key. These are important because it helps in analyzing the data correctly and giving a more efficient reading of the stats. If this isn’t done correctly this could lead to misapplication of the formula resulting in either a positive outcome when it suppose to be negative or negative when it suppose to reflect positive. This also determines if there are returns on investment or lost by the event holder/ host country.

In concluding both the primary and secondary data are very important in determining the economical impact of sport tourism for both small and large sporting events in a country. Small or amateur sporting events, is a safer way of spurring local tourism as such events doesn’t demand no major amount of government funding. Primary data in relation to the event will be theoretically preferable, though it might be costly. Though secondary data were mentioned via the article no studies were recognized defining the use of such process.

References

1. Kurtzman, S., Upper, W. and Charumbarum, S. (1994). Economic Impact of Sport Tourism Activities. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 1(3), pp.36-50 Tourism.gov.ph. (2018). (Accessed 24 Jan. 2018).