Sport tourism: regional promotion strategies

Abstract

The main purposes of this paper are (i) to analyze the regional promotion strategies of the UEFA Euro 2004 and (ii) to contribute for the improvement of planning and implementation strategies of tourism marketing at regional level. Data regarding these strategies were collected and synthesized. We verified if these strategies match some of the theoretical issues of promotion and tourism marketing. Despite the fact that already many studies have been made, internationally, on the impact of sport events, the present study contains something new as it introduces an ante analysis on the regional promotion strategies of major sport events. Unlikely, the results show that no specific and integrated regional promotion strategy was pursuit, and no substantial additional financial effort was made. In what concerns the private regional tourism agents, no promotion could be found. The main tourism promotion competition came from across the boarder, with dynamic promotion actions of the nearby Spanish regional tourism responsibles.