Sport Tourism on the Åland Islands

Abstract

The commissioning party of this thesis is Visit Aland,which is Alands official tourist and member organisation. The goal of this thesis was to examine the capacity of the Aland islands as a sport tourism destination and to determine how the destination could become more attractive to sport tourists. To attain this objective, an evalutaion of the following items was performed: sporting events, sport products, sports facilities, political authorities and operating organisations including marketing measures. The objectives of this thesis were performed on behalf of Visit Aland, working with members of the organisation. Because of this the thesis can be considered pertinent and valuable.

The contents of the theis was retrieved from various forms of literature including books, articles on the Internet, journals on the internet and semi-structured interviews. Qualitative research in the form of semi-structured interviews was the research method chosen for this examination. The interview process took place between March and April 2022. Relevant membems in the sport tourism sector were contacted for this exploration. The determination of the research will thus be based on theoretical information and the empirical research collected from infuental members of the tourism sector on the Aland islands.

The findnigs of the research indicate that the Aland islands has a strong capacity for sport tourism, this is indicated by some of the major strengths of the destination that exist presently including sporting facilities, and good transportation opportunities. There are however areas within the sport tourism sector on Aland that can be improved to improve the overall offering. At this moment in time there is a lack of public transportation available to sporting destination sites outside Mariehamn, and the winter sport tourism season offering needs to be improved