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Sports events are tourist attractions and their image components can relate to the destination image concept and structure. This study examined sports event images held by active and passive sports tourists at four marathon races in Germany. Some differences in the perception of event images were found for active and passive sports tourists as well as for different types of destinations. For active sports tourists, emotional, physical and organisational image associations were clustered closer. For passive sports tourists, social and historical image associations were clustered closer. The type of destination elicited different event images among active and passive sports tourists.

Mega-sporting events reportedly can offer many tangible and intangible benefits to the host country and regions, such as job creation, image improvement, local pride enhancement, social overhead capital investment and tourism business development. However, a paucity of studies in the literature have developed integrative models or have explored domestic tourist behavior in a general, or the sports tourism, context. To address this gap, the present study investigates the relationships between event quality, personal involvement, destination image and destination loyalty in the context of event sports tourism in order to provide sporting destination managers with valuable information for sustainable sports tourism development.

The authors collected information from 365 domestic tourists who attended the 100th National Sports Festival held in Seoul, South Korea, in 2019. Construct validity of the measurement scale was verified by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), factor loadings, average variance (AVE) extracted and construct reliability (CR). Reliability of the measurement scale was verified by Cronbach's alpha analysis. The authors utilized structural equation modeling (SEM) with maximum likelihood estimation to analyze the predicted relationships.

The findings display the positive impacts of (1) event quality on destination image, (2) personal involvement on destination image, (3) personal involvement on destination loyalty and (4) destination image on destination loyalty. The findings indicate the key roles for event quality and personal involvement in improving destination image and the important roles of personal involvement and destination image in building destination loyalty.

The present study (1) contributes to the recent debate in the sports tourism literature over the relationship between the destination image and destination loyalty and (2) shows that there is no mediating role of the destination image on the relationship between the event quality and destination loyalty, and personal involvement and destination loyalty.

Until now the majority of researchers of sports tourism have focused their research on the tourist and their characteristics, meaning, on the demand. Since the majority of authors (Gibson 1998; Seddighi and Theoracharous 2002; Hudson 2003; ?inch and Higham 2001) studied tourists and their characteristics we decided to focus on the providers of active sports holidays. According to Planina, Mihali_(2002, pg. 29) the tourism model is built on demand and supply. The supply side was analyzed by WTO (2004) in their research amongst European tour operators with the highest turnover in order to establish how sport features in products involving Latin America. Based on this idea we decided to carry out a research amongst providers of active sports holidays and asked them about a typical client. We divided the providers into segments according to the type of guests. The research was carried out to find the answer to the question “What do providers of active sports holidays offer in Slovenia and how they perceive their guests?” We were interested to know what they actually offer and the trend of the enquiries they receive from their visitors. The characteristics of the visitors are important to help providers decide how to develop their facilities to meet the demands of the market. We learnt that in Slovenia the majority of tourists are short‐length stays. We also researched the supply and demand and learnt that the providers expect the demand to be highest for skiing and cycling. In the largest of the segments the activities most frequently offered are swimming (water sports), tennis (racquet sports), the usual team sports and skiing. However, the demand for these sports is not growing. Amongst the activities which are in lesser demand but have been defined by the providers as growing are mountain biking and golf.

Existing literature reports the positive image impact of major sports events on sport tourists. This paper empirically tests the image impact of an overall sports events initiative on a host city, and on intention to revisit from the perspective of general international tourists. The findings show that major sports events, in general, can be useful in reaching out to tourists. However, it questions the utilisation of sports events in destination marketing to general tourists - as awareness of sports events actually depresses tourism atmosphere and service image, as well as the overall destination image. Practical implications and future research are suggested.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the structural relationships between destination image, tourist satisfaction, attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty, with an emphasis on the mediating effect of tourist satisfaction on the relation between destination image and loyalty in the context of a small-scale recurring sporting event held in Asia.

Validity and reliability of the measurement scale were proved through a confirmatory factor analysis, Cronbach’s α analyses and correlation analyses. A structural equation modeling test with maximum likelihood estimation was conducted to test the relationships among the research variables using 440 participants.

The results revealed destination image had a direct influence on tourist satisfaction, attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty, and that tourist satisfaction had a direct influence on attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty. Moreover, tourist satisfaction was found to partially mediate relationships between destination image and attitudinal loyalty, and between destination image and behavioral loyalty.

First, destination marketers and organizers of a small event should provide tourists with an international or domestic newsletter of the small event. Second, destination marketers should place well-educated employees at popular hotels and restaurants and the event organizers should arrange that trained volunteers be positioned at stadiums, to enable tourists to find the locations of interest, which would help develop a positive image of the destination. Third, marketers and organizers should actively use social media to improve destination images and promote sporting events.

The authors offer a new perspective of tourist satisfaction as a mediating effect. Existing studies show tourist satisfaction fully mediates on the relation between destination image and loyalty, but the present study shows tourist satisfaction partially mediates this relation. In this respect, the term “sporting event” should be regarded important when attempting to understand tourist psychology and behavior because the level of tourist satisfaction can be affected by a term like “sporting event” in the mediating effect context.

The purpose of this paper is to present a moderated model of sport tourism as an economic development generator from a destination marketing perspective. The model takes into account the differing roles of sport tourism segments on the relationship between motivators of sport tourism and destinations outcomes.

This conceptual paper presents a framework for explaining the differential impact of factors that influence sport tourism based on the tourist segment attracted to the destination.

The proposed model, supported by extant literature, presents sport tourist types as moderating a variety of influencing factors that determine sport tourists’ interest in visiting a destination and the resulting economic impact on a destination.

Practical implications are discussed for managing and marketing destination‐specific factors to appeal to different segments of the sport tourism market in order to maximize the economic impact of sport tourism.

This conceptual model provides a contribution to tourism researchers by providing a comprehensive view of the complex nature of the factors that influence destination choice for different types of sports tourists and the possible economic outcomes that can result.

On a home game weekend of collegiate football, thousands of fan visitors spend their weekend participating in college football games, showing significant potential of sports tourism businesses in the USA. Understanding the original personality of sport tourists and their travel motivation factors is imperative to develop appealing tourist attractions at the destinations of sports team fandoms. The purpose of the study is to examine the relationships among tourists' personality characteristics, their push and pulls motivations, satisfaction with travel experience, and loyalty toward destination and team using structural equation modeling.

The author collected information from a total of 301 sports tourists who had traveled to a college football game within the past year, staying at least one night in a hotel or other lodging place. This study employed PASW Statistics 25.0 and structural equation modeling using LISREL 9.30 for data analyses.

Personality has a significant relationship with push factors, especially for socialization motivation, and pull factors (i.e. access and affordability, other attractions) had more significant effects on sports tourists' satisfaction than push factors. The findings indicate the key roles for the entertainment motivation in generating tourists' satisfaction and destination loyalty and important roles of destination loyalty in building team loyalty.

The present study provides an approach of sports tourists' travel behaviors and experiences in the sporting event tourism. The outcome of this research can help both sports event organizers and destination marketers to understand the motivations for sports game attendance and to develop marketing strategies and products/services for attracting various types of sports tourists to games.

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 purpose of this paper is to explore structural relationships between quality, destination image, perceived value, tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty with emphasis on the mediating effect of tourist satisfaction on relations between destination image and destination loyalty, and between perceived value and destination loyalty in the context of small-scale sporting events.

Construct validity of the measurement scale was verified by confirmatory factor analysis, factor loadings, average variance extracted, construct reliability and correlation analysis. Reliability of the measurement scale was verified by Cronbach’s α analysis. A structural equation modeling test with maximum likelihood estimation was used to test structural relationships between variables in the proposed model using the responses of 311 participants.

Results showed significant and powerful impacts of: event quality, destination image and perceived value on tourist satisfaction; destination image, perceived value, and tourist satisfaction on destination loyalty and demonstrated; and tourist satisfaction fully mediates relationships between destination image and destination loyalty, and between perceived value and destination loyalty.

The study shows: it is meaningful to include quality and value in tourism destination image-satisfaction-loyalty models; provides empirical evidence that tourist satisfaction fully mediates the relation between perceived value and destination loyalty; and confirms small-scale as well as large-scale sporting events should be viewed as important aspects of marketing strategies aimed at improving quality, image, value, satisfaction and loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among athlete star power, enjoyment and revisit intention of sport event tourists in a sport mega-event (SME).

This study was conducted in the context of 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games. A total of 419 respondents completed a survey. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

This study proved the final structure model fit well by having the values and scores higher than the minimum cutoff in all categories. Path coefficients indicate that H1a, H1c and H2 were supported while H1b was not supported by the analysis. In addition, enjoyment partially mediated the relationship between athlete star power and revisit intentions. In particular, two mediating effects were found: enjoyment mediated trustworthiness and revisit intention and expertise and revisit intention. However, enjoyment did not mediate the relationship between attractiveness and revisit intentions.

The limitation of this study lies within two perspectives. Since the data have been collected in one country, the results may be viewed and interpreted for a specific location and time. Thus, it is strongly recommended to conduct the similar studies in the future Olympic Games. In the other perspective, the results could be different from one to another sport game because of the popularity by star power and game itself.

This study adds the literature on sport event research. Although there were a few studies on the effect of athlete star power, a dearth of research examined the relationships among athlete star power (trustworthiness, attractiveness and expertise), enjoyment and revisit intention. These results are valuable to SME managers to increase the propensity of tourists’ revisit intention at sport mega-event by understanding the factors that lead to increased tourist enjoyment.