Sports Tourism an Opportunity for Urban Areas: Classifying Sports Tourists According to Their Level of Sports Engagement and Consumer Behavior

Sports tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors in tourism by combining elements of culture, health, and wellness and recreation. More and more tourists are interested in sport activities during their trips whether sports are the main objective of travel or not. Following running or other popular sports events is acting as a strong motivator for the decision-making process in the choice of destination and greatly influences the decision-making phase of consumer behavior. Sport events of various kinds and sizes attract tourists as participants or spectators and destinations try to add local flavors to them to distinguish themselves and provide authentic local experiences. The aim of this paper is to identify and classify sports tourists according to their different level of engagement in the sporting activity. Furthermore, a hypothesis is made and tested that consumer behavior will present differences both in the motivational (deciding on a destination) and in the experiential phase (visiting and experiencing a destination). A multi input matrix will allow to determine proximity to the culturally oriented or health-oriented part of the scale and define and identify consumer behavioral patterns accordingly. In the post-COVID-19 era, it is very important for destinations to find ways to reignite their tourism product while placing safety as a topo priority. The link of sports tourism to health and wellness issues presents a valuable opportunity especially for urban areas to explore alternative visitation patterns.