Today the sports is doing very important role in promoting the tourism industry through sports tours as well as in doing its own functions. There fore local governments are making effort to develop tour-products for the activation of tourism industry....
Today the sports is doing very important role in promoting the tourism industry through sports tours as well as in doing its own functions. There fore local governments are making effort to develop tour-products for the activation of tourism industry. Also they are utilizing sports to attract more tourists. That is, they are trying to bring economic benefits to their region by attracting tourist with sports. The purpose of this paper is to suggest effective policy implications for Jeollabuk-do by researching the ways to activate sports tourism.
To accomplish the purpose of this study, we have surveyed 1,000 people who are selected by the stratified random sampling method. They include 500 teachers of physical education in middle and high schools, 250 university students, and 250 general publics. The questionnaire contains characteristics of demography, general types and degree of satisfaction on sports tour, types of sport products, intention of development of sports tour, and needs of the information and specialist training for sports tour. We have performed the pilot test twice and extracted the questions through reliability tests. With questionnaires collected, we have conducted descriptive statistics, analyses of frequency, crosstable, and analyses of variance with SPSS Window 10.
The result of this study we obtained through data collection and analyses are as follows:
First, the result of study on the general types of sports tourism shows that the degree of recognition on sports tourism is generally low. The frequency of participation in the sports tourism is the higher for the group with higher education and income, and most respondents have participated 1-3 times. The types of sports that respondents want to experience in the future is in the order of golf, bungee jump and skin-scuba. The purposes of participation in sports tourism are to spend spare time, to pursue amusement, to get rid of stresses, and to improve health.
Second, the degree of satisfaction on sports tourism is significantly different by the ages. The respondents are generally not satisfied with the sports tourism. The result shows that natural tour and social tour are most wanted tour products when people consider sport tourism. As competitive tour products linked with sports tourism in Jeollabuk-do, the social and natural tours are selected. The statistical results on the factors of Jeollabuk-do as a sports tour place such as traffic, lodging, service of people working at the place, convenient facilities and attitude of the local residents show that the respondents are satisfied only with the food.
Third, inquiry on the needs to develop sports tour resorts in Jeollabuk-do shows that the portion of respondents who think that sports tourism industry of Jeollabuk-do has not been activated is high. The respondents with higher age, education and income, and the teachers of physical education show more negative opinion on it. The respondents regard that development of facilities, programs, sports products and public relations are needed to activate the sports tourism. Also the respondents recognize the need for the development of sport tourism resorts which have unique local characteristics, and believe that it will bring economic benefits. Among the four tourism areas, the respondents think that we need to develop in the order of the forth, the second, the first and the third area. As facilities to be established in the tourism area, soccer, golf, ice sports in the first area, ski/snowboard, mountain-bike and hiking in the second one, mountain-bike, hiking, and paraglider/hangglider in the third one, water-ski/Z-ski, windsurfing, yacht in the forth one are respectively selected. The result also shows that people prefer the sports tour resorts in a spot near the tour resort or in separate place rather that within it. For the funds to develop sports tour resort, the combination of local government, private firms and local residents funds are deemed appropriate. For the development of sports tour product, the needs to develop products that are linked to the local festivals with local tour resorts are presented.
Forth, the recognition on the needs of public relations for sports tourism product is significantly different by the occupation, marriage status and education of the respondents. As medium for the public relations of sports tourism resort, TV and Internet are selected.
Fifthly, the result shows that the occupation of respondents has significant relations with the recognition on the needs to train sports tourism professionals. The respondents in their thirties, and whose occupation are teachers of physical education are the most positive in the needs of training sports tourism professionals.
To conclude the above results, it shows that it is most necessary to formulate a plan to increase the degree of recognition on the sports tourism. Therefore, It is necessary to hold seminars and conferences on sports tourism or to utilize the press to increase the degree of recognition.
The survey results show that the sports tourism industry in Jeollabuk-do has not been activated yet. To consider that the modern tour tendency is experience tour and active tour, sports tour is very appropriate to the modern tour. Therefore, we need to formulate a plan to receive supports from government for the activation of sports tourism industry, for the development of facilities, programs and products, and public relations. The deficit investment of local governments for the facilities development should be filled up considering the third sector or the forth sector as an investor. It is necessary to develop sports tour products that are linked with local characteristics and local festivals. Also we should acquire competitiveness by making and executing marketing strategies, understanding the preferences and characteristics of sports tourists.