Introduction to Sports Recreation in Tourism

Introduction to Sports Recreation in Tourism

• Tourism is defined as activities people undertake during travel and stays in places different from their usual environment, lasting less than a year, for leisure, business, or other reasons.
• Sport tourism involves actions aimed at communication and promoting social aspects within a tourist establishment to create an ideal environment. This can also include energizing and promoting the company's economy by accompanying the tourist in various ways to enjoy their free time.

Aims of Touristic Animation

• Building customer loyalty
• Increasing the length of tourist stays
• Cultivating a positive perception of the destination (affective climate)
• Establishing a strong brand
• Offering seasonal activities

Characteristics of Recreational Services

• Intangibility: Recreational services are hard to assess before use and cannot be stored. This makes them highly sensitive to demand and easily imitable. Pricing is complex because quality is determined by the customer after consumption.
• Heterogeneity: Recreational services are variable and their nature varies according to the market. Intraservice consistency is important to avoid boredom.
• Development of the service: The production and consumption of services are often simultaneous. The customer is involved in this process, with the possibility of centralization/decentralization issues in massive productions.
• Expiration: Services are perishable and cannot be stored, thus leading to supply/demand adjustments.

Possible Solutions to Service Limitations

• Intangibility: Solutions for making services more visible and tangible—such as associating services with tangible products, product differentiation via quality, personalized promotional media, and brand creation—are needed
• Heterogeneity: Industrialization of services, and implementing quality control strategies, can standardize activities.
• Development: Understanding the consumer (sociotypes), using diverse sales channels, and employee training strategies address development challenges.
• Expiration: The key to overcoming these problems is to meet demand directly when services are available, and to alter supply to better accommodate demand issues.

Types of Tourism Animation Programs

• Simple: A single program catering to all user needs, with at least two daily activities. This includes socializing events, excursions, and introductory sports training.
• Parallel: Multiple programs catering to different user groups (like skilled/novel users, or adults/kids).

Consumer Classification in Recreational Activities

• Hedonists: Engage in activities like sailing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, racket sports, archery, and open-air activities like kayaking and rock climbing.
• Routinarians: Seek activities within or near their family settings, including team-based sports, activities for children, and team-building exercises that keep them in a comfort zone.
• Passives: Prefer slower, relaxing activities such as yoga, tai chi, and dancing designed for health and relaxation.
• Workaholics: Seek activities like guided tours, shows, competitions, card games, and gambling to learn and improve productive skills.

Design of Recreation/Animation Offers

• Surroundings: Assessment of hotel features, typology, location, capacity, available spaces, nearby environments, and seasonality.
• Categories of surroundings: City hotels (business, congress, itinerant), Mountain (stay, itinerant), Sea, rivers, lakes (stay, itinerant).
• Seasonality: Providing details on relevant activities for specific seasons (river/lake, rural, white, nautical)
• Infrastructure: Details on indoor and outdoor facilities such as multipurpose rooms, indoor sports spaces, spas, racket courts, game rooms, coffee/relax rooms, gyms, heated pools, outdoor pools, access to beaches, spaces for shows, and multisport courts.
• Materials: Specific sports equipment are identified, offering options for free use, supervision, and rentals.
• Human Resources: The staff's training, skills, and attitudes are relevant, in addition to identifying individuals with animation/sports skills, and multilingual capability.

This quiz explores the concepts of sports tourism and the aims of touristic animation. It examines how recreational services impact customer loyalty and destination branding. Dive into the characteristics that define these services and their role in enhancing tourist experiences.