Racing Cyclists as Sports Tourists: The Experiences and Behaviours of a Case Study Group of Cyclists in East Kent, England

What little work exists on cycling tourism tends to be focused entirely on economic impacts with little coverage of the participants themselves and, furthermore, the coverage looks mainly at 'cycling holidays' of one sort or another with day visits and cycle racing being largely ignored. T...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journal of sport tourism 2006-08, Vol.11 (3-4), p.259-274
Main Author: Bull, C.J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cycle Tourism
Sports Tourism
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:What little work exists on cycling tourism tends to be focused entirely on economic impacts with little coverage of the participants themselves and, furthermore, the coverage looks mainly at 'cycling holidays' of one sort or another with day visits and cycle racing being largely ignored. This paper offers a modest attempt at redressing this imbalance by examining the travel behaviour of a small group of racing cyclists in East Kent together with their attitudes towards place and environment and their socio-economic and demographic profile. The work is part of a broader study concerned with cycle tourism and, more generally, sports tourist typologies and is also designed to explore various ideas underpinning the 'sports tourism participation model' outlined in Weed & Bull (2004) . The paper shows that the cyclists constitute an important group of sports tourists, in terms of their overall travel patterns and related behaviour and motivations. As sports tourists, both the importance of the activity and the level of participation is high and thus they can be located towards the driven end of the sports tourism participation model.
ISSN:1477-5085
1029-5399
DOI:10.1080/14775080701400927