Investigating challenges of sports tourists, traditional indigenous games festival in Golestan Province Case Study: Horse races and Gurooshwrestling

Document Type : Research Paper

Abstract

In recent yearsthe emphasis on traditional and indigenous sport as one of the most important ways to attract business and sport tourism development has been greatly concerned with economic and political goals in different countries. Thus, the main purpose of the present study is to investigate challenges ofsportstourists in traditional indigenousgames festivalin Golestan Province.                      Statically population consist of all athletes insportsmen participating in horse race and Guroosh wrestlingin Golestanprovince (n=416) that n=219 sport tourists and non-sport tourists took part in this study. To examine the problems in sport tourists Higham’s (1999) sport tourists questionnaire with 6 sub-scales of place of tournament, distance traveled, and mode of transportation, length of stay, entertainment place and expenditure were used. In order to analyze the data, descriptive statistics, t-test and Pearsoncorrelation test in the significant level of (p≤0.05) were used. The result indicated that in group of Active sport tourists, Place of tournament (%37.49) distance traveled (32.81%) and length of competition (%42/06) were more important of other sub-scales but in group of non-active tourists distance traveled (%41.09), mode of transportation (%40.16), expenditure (%39.22) and entertainment place (%38.16), were more important factors regarding participation inGonbad horse racing.
Taking the results of the present study into account it seems that focusing on appropriate choice of place for sport events in terms of providing facilities and holding local sport festivals in free time of sport tourists are of important strategies in attracting sport tourist into Golestan province.

Keywords


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