Abstract:
Sports tourism indicates all those tourists who, for non-profit interests, choose to leave their
countries to travel to other place in order to take part in or appreciate sports-related activities.
Sports tourism is a combination of sports industry and classical tourism industry, which
possesses the features of tournaments as well as leisure tourism. The Chinese sports tourism
products include hiking at Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, drifting in the Yellow River, skiing in the
North-East of China, dragon boats tournaments in Hubei and appreciating Shaolin martial art of
in Zhengzhou.
In recent years, due to the improvement in the material and cultural life-style, an increase in
people’s leisure time and a sharp rise in their discretionary income, citizens started to focus on
enhancing the quality of their lives. They actively participate in sports-related activities, and
show great interests in different kinds of sports events. On the other hand, they are eager to
travel around and explore the world, look for new forms of entertainment and engage in sport
activities. The Olympics represents the largest sports event, which is closely-related with
tourism.
Sports tourism of the Olympics helps complete the sports facilities of hosting city and facilitate
the development of sports. At the same time, it brings a huge amount of economic benefits to
the hosting city, all the more motivates the development of tourism. The Olympics contributes
directly to improve the hosting city’s tourism environment and attract a large number of tourists
into the country. It also speeds up the development of a series of service industries, including
transportation, catering and hotel industry as well as the domestic product industries, turning
the hosting city into a good market for foreign investment.
Source:
Fang Qianhua, Xieyi “Research of 2008 Beijing Olympics tourism issues”, “Journal of Hebei Institute of
Physical Education”, Volume 19, 3rd Issue, September 2005
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