Customer Experience in Sports Tourism Business
Saana, Vuoti (2025)
2025
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025120432653
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025120432653
Tiivistelmä
Sport Tourism is a growing field of industry that has elements from both the sports business and tourism industries. Attending sporting events, engaging in sports and taking care of oneself are very popular aspects of today’s lifestyle. Travelling is trendy, and combining watching or participating in a sporting event with travelling is a popular combination. People travel for sports, and sports are used as well for authorizing international trips, since there are sustaina-bility questions raised in relation to air travel.
Sports tourism is a field that is not very well researched. In terms of making a business in the sports tourism field there are elements from both the sports business and tourism industries. Planning, selling, and executing a trip to a sporting event involves always a level of uncertainty due to relying on a single event and its organization. Selling a package trip has risks, possibili-ties, and a flow of a regular tourism industry sale to a consumer but the internation sporting event brings uncertainty, risks, and unavailability of flights, accommodation, transportation, and other elements. Planning well-ahead is required, and plans, in comparison to non-sporting package trips, often change during the trip due to things happening inside or within the core sporting event.
Matkatoimisto Lupinus was the commissioner of the research. The research aimed to identify how customer experience can be measured in the sports tourism business and what the ele-ments of it are. Furthermore, the research aimed to find out what is the level of customer ex-perience of the customers of the company. In this research the sample were the customers par-ticipating in the WRC Rally Islas Canarias 2025.
The research was conducted using a qualitative and quantitative research approach with two different surveys to partially the same audience. The collected data was coded and categorized into themes and analyzed with the inductive method. The analysis aimed at finding the current level of customer experience. From that, the management might draw their own conclusions and take steps in making the customer experience level better.
The results showed that the general level of customer experience is good. The research showed that there are things that require more effort and more fluent workflows from the travel agency side but in general, the customers are happy and their expectations about the Rally Islas Canarias trip were fulfilled.
Sports tourism is a field that is not very well researched. In terms of making a business in the sports tourism field there are elements from both the sports business and tourism industries. Planning, selling, and executing a trip to a sporting event involves always a level of uncertainty due to relying on a single event and its organization. Selling a package trip has risks, possibili-ties, and a flow of a regular tourism industry sale to a consumer but the internation sporting event brings uncertainty, risks, and unavailability of flights, accommodation, transportation, and other elements. Planning well-ahead is required, and plans, in comparison to non-sporting package trips, often change during the trip due to things happening inside or within the core sporting event.
Matkatoimisto Lupinus was the commissioner of the research. The research aimed to identify how customer experience can be measured in the sports tourism business and what the ele-ments of it are. Furthermore, the research aimed to find out what is the level of customer ex-perience of the customers of the company. In this research the sample were the customers par-ticipating in the WRC Rally Islas Canarias 2025.
The research was conducted using a qualitative and quantitative research approach with two different surveys to partially the same audience. The collected data was coded and categorized into themes and analyzed with the inductive method. The analysis aimed at finding the current level of customer experience. From that, the management might draw their own conclusions and take steps in making the customer experience level better.
The results showed that the general level of customer experience is good. The research showed that there are things that require more effort and more fluent workflows from the travel agency side but in general, the customers are happy and their expectations about the Rally Islas Canarias trip were fulfilled.