engleski

Characteristics of sport sevent visitors ; the case of EuroBasket 2015

Sport events represent an important part of (sport) tourism industry referring to “all journeys that are initiated by the motive of participating in certain sporting events, from national to international competitions” (Bartoluci, 2004:20). The main motive for travel is a certain sporting event, whether the tourists are active (athletes) or passive participants (viewers). A number of researchers studied into various aspects of mostly major sport events. The aim of this paper is to present characteristics of visitors at a major EuroBasket 2015 held in Zagreb, Croatia in 2015. For that purpose, a survey was conducted among EuroBasket 2015 visitors using methodology presented in Ivašković (2014). During five days of competitions, in total 767 questionnaires were collected, and 761 eligible for analysis. The sample consisted of 491 foreign visitors (64, 5%) from 21 countries. A decision to come was mostly made in the period of one month (40, 8%) or one year (33, 8%) before the competition. Interviewees preferred the company of friends (50, 8%) or family members (26, 8%) and on average visited 3, 5 games. A more detailed analysis of foreign visitors reveals that more than 62% of foreign visitors state that they came to Zagreb exclusively due to EuroBasket 2015, whilst almost 29% of them adjusted their time of visit to EuroBasket 2015. For majority of them (56%) this was not the first time to visit Croatia and almost 80% of them plan to visit again. Their average daily spending for accommodation, city transportation, food and beverage, tickets and other non-games related costs amounted to just under 60 euros per person.

EuroBasket ; Major sport events ; Visitor characteristics

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