Recognizing the financial power of sport, government and private sector investments in sport tourism events, venues, and infrastructure have grown significantly since 2000. Competition is fierce as cities wager millions of euros to stage an Olympic Games, World Cup, Commonwealth Games or America’s Cup. Professional preparation programmes in sport tourism management have likewise followed industry growth. Sport tourism as an academic field of study has emerged from existing sport, management, and tourism curricula. This presentation proposes an international sport tourism network comprised of academic, commercial and government institutions: IC-SPORT (International Co-Laboratory for Sport and Tourism Research). The vision, mission, benefits and opportunities to students, scholars, sport tourism businesses and academic institutions affiliated with IC-SPORT will be described. THE VISION of IC-SPORT is to advance the well-being of the global community through the creation and dissemination of knowledge. IC-SPORT fosters a collaborative, intellectual community through partnerships with institutions both public and private, enabling scholars to cross institutional boundaries for innovative instruction, research and development, and service learning. The IC-SPORT MISSION is to: provide outstanding education, training, and research and development services in sport and tourism management worldwide; and promote a network for collaboration amongst scholars and practitioners to meet international demands for education, training, research and development in sport and tourism management. IC-SPORT will serve as a catalyst for global partnerships between scholars, universities, sport and tourism businesses, government and non-government organizations using existing and emerging technologies for video conferences, searchable databases, blog, distance learning, collaborative research, virtual trade fairs, etc.

Access to document: E13_Miklos_Banhidi.pdf

On the Go: Trips and Tours with Active Older Adults
Alexis D’Ascanio, Town of Falmouth (Maine, USA)

This workshop will present helpful hints and successful strategies for taking adults and senior citizens on educational & “vacational” trips and tours. Traveling can be fun, but it works best when you take the time to plan in advance. Whether you would like to plan a day trip or an overnight trip, this workshop will be helpful to you. Cindy and I have been doing trips together for several years and we both field a lot of phone calls/inquiries from colleagues asking the how, what, where, and when questions. We put together this presentation as a response from others in the field who wanted to know how and why our trips were such a success. We have both presented this workshop for the Maine Adult Education Association as well as for the Maine Recreation and Park Association, the the New England Training Institute and the Northern New England Park and Recreation Conference. This workshop is a brief lecture format enhanced by a powerpoint presentation. The presenters encourage participant interaction with an ample amount of time reserved for questions and answers. Handouts and visual aids are also used. Participants will leave with a list of potential day and overnight trip contacts and be prepared to share the information gained with their neighboring communities in order to create successful programs. Participants will discover the value of the local as well as state economic impact that “being a tourist in your own backyard” can stimulate. Participants will also gain a clear appreciation of the background work that goes into planning successful trips and tours including safety considerations, socialization methods and the art of being flexible.

Access to document : E13_Alexis_Dascanio.pdf

Tourist Roles-Typology: Application to the Cypriot Context
Alexis Polemitis & George Panayiotou, European University Cyhprus (Nicosia, Cyprus); Georgia Yfantidou & George Costa, Democritus University of Thrace (Komotini, Greece)

The quality improvement of Cyprus tourism has been identified as the number one action plan in the recent years. Emphasis is placed on the promotion and the quality improvement of domestic tourism which can contribute both to the economy and the regional development. The purpose of the survey was to check the validity of the questionnaire for the Cypriot sample and to investigate demographic characteristics of tourists. The data was consisted of a stratified sample by age and sex of 650 individuals, from both the rural and urban areas of Cyprus. For the investigation of the Cyprus domestic tourist’s roles it was used a part of the questionnaire of Gibson Heather and Yiannakis Andrew (2002), “Tourist Roles Preference Scale” (TRPS) and also translated in Greek (control of cross-cultural validity) by Yfantidou G., Costa G. & Michalopoulos M. (2007). The questionnaires were distributed via specialized software of telephone surveys (NIPO CATI System) which has the ability to choose random telephone numbers, already entered in telephone catalog. Cronbach a was used to examine the reliability of the questionnaire of tourist roles (a = .79). Furthermore, a principal component analysis and quartimax rotation was used to verify the validity of TRPS questionnaire of the 32 variables of the tourist roles, for the specific sample. The analysis identified seven variables which explain the 49.70%. The majority of the sample (74,3%) went vacations inside Cyprus the last two years. Most of them were married (79,7%), while singles were the 16,3%. About 50% were full employed, while the 17,7% were retired. As far it concerns the level of education, the bigger percentage were graduates of high school (55,5,%) and the graduates of university/four year college were 28,2%. The ques tionnaire proved to be suitable for the typology of the domestic tourists in Cyprus survey. The results are of vital importance for the identification of the typology and the profile of the tourists in Cyprus.