Exploring the relationships between motivation,attachment and loyalty within sport event tourism

Attendance at sports events continues to rise, as evidenced by increased attendance across a range of sports events in 2014. Despite this, destinations that host live sports events struggle to attract repeat visitors outside scheduled events. This study aims to better understand the relationship between motivation, attachment and loyalty within event tourism. This paper discusses the existing contributions in these areas by drawing on sport and tourism literature and is the first to investigate the relationship across all three constructs. Within this paper, we develop the initial outline of a theoretical model, which depicts these relationships.     

Towards a research agenda for post-disaster and post-crisis recovery strategies for tourist destinations: a narrative review

This paper presents the results of a review of the literature concerning post-disaster and post-crisis recovery for tourist destinations. A total of 64 articles on this topic published in peer-reviewed tourism journals between January 2000 and June 2012 were included in the review. These articles were written on a number of different disaster contexts, including weather-related events (floods and hurricanes), natural disasters (earthquakes and tsunami) and other events (such as pandemics and terrorist attacks). The key themes that emerged included a lack of communication between stakeholders, media sensationalism, the importance of selecting the most effective marketing messages, lack of disaster-management plans, damage to destination image and reputation, and the changes in tourist behaviour following crises and disasters. The review identifies ways to improve the speed and effectiveness of response to disaster, the importance of relationship marketing with loyal customers and the need to quickly repair destination image. Suggestions for future research arising from this review include the urgent need to encourage tourism operators to engage with crisis preparedness and disaster-management strategies and the importance of gaining a better understanding of the consumer response to disastrous events.     

Economic measures of tourism yield: what markets to target?

An understanding of the yield potential of different source markets and segments can underpin destination marketing by both public and private sector organisations. The standard yield measure relates to expenditure injected into a destination from different market segments. This measure has several limitations, which are discussed in the paper. With the increasing sophistication of economic models such as computable general equilibrium, models, it is now feasible to develop new and more useful measures of tourism yield, which directly measure the gains to different stakeholders. Several economy‐wide impact measures of yield are developed and contrasted for selected Australian inbound tourism markets. The measures produce conflicting signals for public and private sector tourism marketers and planners. The reward from further research in developing and operationalising yield measures is more informed policy‐making by destination managers in respect of destination marketing and new product development, resulting in greater economic gains from inbound tourism. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Cittáslow’ eco-gastronomic heritage as a tool for destination development

Slow Food has gained considerable attention as a social movement trying to counteract increasing globalisation in eating habits and food production. Cittáslow, a network of towns, are working with qualitative local urban development, based on similar principles as Slow Food. The ‘slow’ movements could be expected to have influences on tourism development. This possible connection has been neglected in the scientific tourism literature. Based on a study in three Cittáslow towns in Northern Italy, this article concentrates on how destination development is conducted in a Cittáslow context, unveiling some contradictions between the commercial sides of tourism and the non-commercial ethos of the Cittáslow movement. The studied towns were involved in various efforts in the field of sustainable planning, thereby also improving destination specific resources and local identity. One example is their focus on ‘slow’ events, mainly based on local gastronomy. Tourism marketing was, however, only of secondary importance; which mirrors some scepticism towards mass tourism and commercialisation, and even against marketing as such. Despite this, the Cittáslow concept may have an indirect potential for tourism development by improving product development and increased visibility. The risks involved concern gentrification and overexploitation.