Expectations of Sport Event Tourism Experiences

Abstract: Purpose: This research aims to study potential tourists’ expectations of sport event tourism experiences and discuss whether having past sport event tourism experiences influence tourists’ expectations for future trip experiences. Methods: This research combines a literature study, a qualitative study and a quantitative study. The literature review aimed to define a framework of sport event tourism experiences. Based on this framework, interviews were performed. The interview data was analyzed by deductive content analysis and were extended to a quantitative survey. Factor analysis was conducted as the main approach to generate main themes of experience expectations. Lastly, the survey data was analyzed by hypothesis tests to confirm/disconfirm the expectation differences between different tourist groups. Findings: Results of factor analysis show that there are five main themes of expectations of sport event tourism experiences: efficiency & excitement, education, authenticity, socialization and convenience. Tourists are very demanding on all the five dimensions and an efficient & exciting experience is most desired. Comparisons through hypothesis testing show that firstly, non-experienced sport event tourists have a higher expectation on authentic experience than experienced tourists; secondly, frequent sport event tourists show a higher expectation on social experience than less-frequent tourists.