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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.

The author addresses the unequal participation of different nations in outgoing tourism as an ethical question and proposes a tourist certificate trading programme. Today 65 per cent of the total tourism expenditure belongs to the top ten tourism outgoing countries that only have 15 per cent of the world population. The tourist emission trading programme would provide governments with an efficient tool for obtaining equity in trans‐boundary tourism consumption by giving financial compensation for not travelling. Travellers would have to hold tourism permits equal to the value of their travel consumption units. If they proved insufficient they would have to buy permits from other participants that travel less. Non‐travellers would be compensated for not travelling, the third world nations would gain financial sources due to their lower travel propensity on the account of western countries with a higher propensity to travel. Since tourism uses and destroys the environment and grows constantly, such a programme would enable the control of the growth of tourism too ‐ by limiting the total number of certificates.