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This paper aims to explore the journeys of a group of North American Master athletes who travelled to Scotland to compete in the 2014 Masters World Championship Highland Games. Conceptualising, the Masters World Championship Highland Games as a unique form of sport heritage tourism, the paper explores how imaginations of the host venue are caught within individual and collective histories, while also being influenced by the socio-political context of contemporary Scotland.

After detailing the histories of the Highland games and Scottish emigration, the study draws upon a qualitative methodology to explore how such histories impact the imaginations of the Highland region.

This paper examines the journeys of athletes to the games, how they understood the games venue space and surrounding areas, and also how the Highland region itself was the site of contested meanings. The study concludes with a discussion of the narratives that frame imaginations of the Highlands and Scotland more broadly.

The paper adds to existing knowledge on sport heritage tourism and considers how conceptualisations of Scotland continue to be renegotiated in light of contemporary political developments.

In this article, the authors analyse a complex social process affecting historic public paths in rural areas in southern Spain. Despite the fact that urban populations are demanding the enhancement of this type of natural heritage for tourism, sports and recreational use, some parts of the network have been abandoned or usurped.

The study is multidisciplinary, comprising three interlinked studies. The cartographic study comprises an inventory of public paths in rural areas based on administrative sources. The legal study analyses local, regional and national regulations governing agricultural, environmental, heritage, sports and tourism uses of the infrastructure. The sociological study analyses social discourses on the uses of public paths, and identifies conflicts between farmers, landowners, environmentalists, sportspeople and tourists.

The preliminary results identified an important public paths network in Andalusia, approximately 160,000 km. The legal study found that there are laws regulating use, although local authorities do not monitor compliance or provide solutions to enhance management. The sociological study determined the attribution of environmental, cultural and economic value to public paths, but also the existence of conflicts between rural and urban populations.

Given that this is ongoing research, only state of the art and some preliminary albeit sufficiently consistent results are presented.

The results could help to guide public policy and governance of public paths.

Public paths promote rural development and a green/sustainable economy.

The research results and conclusions are original.

The purpose of this study aims to examine sports tourism through a conceptual lens. The study offers a deep assessment of the general structure and purpose of sports tourism. Thus, the authors aim to determine the contributions of scientific studies in the field of sports tourism to sports tourism literature.

A qualitative research design was created and data collected using document analysis. The research articles were categorized and analyzed according to their objectives, journals of publication, keywords, application areas, research methods used, data collection techniques and findings

It was been determined that the research articles in the field of sports tourism contributed significantly to the sports tourism literature and to the cumulative progress of the field.

The implications of this study is that only publications in the field of sports tourism (in the tourism category) indexed in the Web of Science between 2014 and 2018 were examined.

Studies to be carried out in the field of sports tourism should be seen as continuations, rather than repetitions, of one another. Thus, more information about the field of sports tourism is needed to better articulate the structure of the field for the benefit of future researchers.

There is a need for studies to contribute to the development of sports tourism in the literature. This study aims to take a step in this direction. With the increase of activities to be carried out in both the field and practice of sports tourism, a better relationship will be established between sports, local people and relevant stakeholders.

More theoretical studies in this field (Gibson, 1998a; Soedjatmiko, 2015) suggest that the field of sports tourism can be further developed. In light of this call, the present study will provide an overview of sports tourism research as a whole, thus contributing to future research by its own merits. It will guide the authors to determine how activities in the field of sports tourism have grown and how they are progressing

This chapter introduces its readers to the concept of tourism. It sheds light on the rationale for tourism, as it explains the tourists’ inherent motivations to travel. It also describes different aspects that together make up the tourism industry. Tourists travel to destinations that are accessible to them. They require accommodation if they are visiting a place for more than 24 hours. Leisure and business travellers may also visit attractions, and engage in recreational activities. Hence, the tourist destinations should have the right amenities and facilities. In this light, this chapter clarifies how destinations may offer different products to satisfy a wide array of tourists. Tourism products can include urban (or city) tourism, seaside tourism, rural tourism, ecotourism, wine tourism, culinary tourism, health tourism, medical tourism, religious tourism, cultural (or heritage) tourism, sports tourism, educational tourism, business tourism (including meetings, incentives, conferences and events), among others.

This chapter examines the role of heritage as a means of empowering destination communities and providing deeper and more meaningful encounters between tourists and their destination, which contributes to the notion of Destination Conscience by highlighting more sustainable and humane ways of ‘doing’ tourism and opening places up to greater community involvement and access by visitors. This includes heritage concepts such as Indigenous communities, local spirituality and religious traditions, public archaeology and ordinary heritage, and how these translate into deeper engagement between residents and tourists, community empowerment and a more creative and holistic tourist experiences. Conceptually, this chapter highlights notions of empowerment, tourists' experiences and Destination Conscience.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships among destination image, perceived quality, perceived value, satisfaction and revisit intention of sport tourism in Iran.

Statistical population of this research consisted of those tourists who traveled to Mazandaran province in Iran as a sport tourism destination in 2012. A random sample of 1,250 tourists was asked to respond to questionnaires from which 886 accurate questionnaires were used for analysing data. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to explore the relationships among the research variables.

The results showed that sport tourists’ perception of destination image, perceived quality and perceived value influenced their satisfaction and revisit intention positively.

The results of this research help to better understand the behavioral intentions, which can be an acceptable basis to increase sport tourists’ visit and revisit of a sport destination.

The overall significance of tourism's role in the nation's holistic development is now a common phenomenon world over. That is why the Government of various countries are according top-most priority towards tourism development. The luxury tourism is that niche segment which is growing intense day by day and the craving of luxury traveller is uninfluenced by any economic turmoil or the crises. Tourism is now widely acknowledged as the strategic tool for economic diversification in the Sultanate of Oman. The Government is fully geared towards turning Oman into a prime luxury tourism destination by incorporating tourism in its vision 2040 strategy. The Government is actively tapping Oman's luxury tourism potential with improved tourism product development, increased projects funding, thoughtful marketing and brand promotion to reap benefits from tourism investments. Oman's unparalleled beauty, rich historic grandeur and authentic hospitality complement the desire of luxury travellers to seek unique quality and comfort, exclusivity and less ostentation. With the slogan ‘Beauty has an address’, the laudable effort of Oman has placed its tourism offering as an ideal upscale and luxury destination in the Middle East. The chapter explores the prospects of beautiful attractions and various services and facilities offered by Oman to qualify as a luxury destination. It also identifies the challenges faced by Oman in luxury tourism destination development.

This paper aims to reflect on the nature of “parkrun tourism” and the challenges this presents to the understanding of sports tourism.

The contradictions and contested terrain of sports tourism is discussed with the reference to three of the most widely used definitions for the field.

Parkrun tourism is introduced comprising four formats: spanning the domestic and global; the informal and formal; the organic and institutional; and the experience and commercial product.

The particular challenges that parkrun tourism presents to existing understandings of sports tourism is considered. The conclusion discusses the prospect of future research, both empirical and theoretical, on parkrun tourism.

The authors outline a range of ways in which parkrun tourism affords opportunity for further inquiry for parkrun scholarship and sports tourism.

A new specification for sports tourism is proposed that accommodates parkrun tourism.

Archaeological heritage tourism has great potential for development in numerous destinations. However, literature on archaeological heritage tourism is scarce and empirical data are minimal. This paper aims to identify the main themes shared in online reviews by tourists, as well as identify factors known as satisfiers and dissatisfiers based on Herzberg’s two-factor theory among tourists who visited Petra UNESCO heritage site.

The research used content analyses to analyse 1,419 tourist’s online reviews on TripAdvisor. Leximancer software provided computer-assisted qualitative data analysis that pinpoint the dominant themes, after which further qualitative analysis found the main narratives associated with different satisfaction groups.

Successively, seven themes were revealed: entrance, trip, monastery, buildings, animal, carriage and safe. Furthermore, a four-dimensional model was postulated to help understand the components and flow of visitors’ experiences in an archaeological heritage site. In addition, the findings of the study revealed that tourists who scored their experience as 4 (very good) or 5 (excellent) (satisfiers) commonly shared perceptions about architecture, buildings, safe, temples, monasteries, tours, tombs and helpful. Contrarily, reviewers that rated their experience as 1 (terrible) or 2 (poor) (dissatisfiers) shared narratives around concepts such as expensive, animals, carriages, locals and shops.

The results offer valuable understandings of cultural heritage tourists’ overall experiences based on TripAdvisor reviews and facilitate the identification of the dominant themes associated with drivers of tourists’ satisfaction/dissatisfaction.

This paper aims to determine to what extent there is a difference in employees’ perception of abuse in the selective tourism destination in various types of specialized hotels.

A survey of employees in specialized hotels in the selective tourism destination has the sample of 1,796 cases. Multivariate analysis of variance is used for testing the level of perception’s differences.

There is a statistically significant difference in the perception of abuse among employees in various types of specialized hotels such as wellness hotels, sport hotels, business hotels and congress hotels.

The results offer employees’ perception of differences about abuse in various types of specialized hotels in the selective tourism destination. There is a possibility of practical usage of methodology for identification of the most often types of abuse in specialized hotels. The identification of abuse is to protect specific social structures such as employees in specialized hotels in the selective tourism destination.

Research could serve as a good example for future practical and theoretical research in the field of abuse and specialized hotels. The paper can be used as a methodological tool to show how to identify the most often types of abuse in specialized hotels in a concrete selective tourism destination.