Irish Rugby legend Keith Wood stepped straight off a plane from Chicago and straight into the cauldron of the World Travel Market in London yesterday as his company W2 Consulting hosted the first Global Sport Tourism Summit as part of the travel trade’s annual mass gathering.
The USA and London won the awards for Best Sports Destination and Best Sports City as part of the event which also saw talks from Stephen Roche and Dwight Yorke on how they had transitioned from roles at the highest level of sport to a new facet of promoting sport as a tourism initiative.
Roche has his own hotel in Majorca where he hosts cycling holidays and has grown the business from 300 visitor a year to 2,000.
“When I retired at age 33 I had to find something to do, something to pay for four kids and the rest of my life,” he said.
“My idea was that people would pay to go on cycling holidays and while it was slow to take off at first and nobody was willing to back it, the growth over the 20 years has been solid and this year we are up 18% so there is clearly something there.”
Next year to celebrate 30 years since his treble of major titles including the Tour de France he is planning specific tours which will doubtless prove popular but Majorca remains the base.
Dwight Yorke was a Man United legend at the height of their dominance and when he hung up his boots he became a sporting ambassador for Trinidad and Tobago, looking to help them secure a share of what is a massive area for growth.
Event Scotland presented an interesting approach to their development of a portfolio of sports themed events, not any one of which is outstanding in terms of delivery on its own but all of which together have added real value to what the country has achieved as a place to go and be active.
Events like the Tiree Wave Classic and the Loch Ness Marathon sit comfortably in the portfolio alongside the World Mountain Bike Championship, each adding a layer of attraction for overseas travellers in search of something different.
This is an area where Ireland is blessed with similar natural ‘infrastructure’ and Sport for Business will be looking at the prospects for Adventure Sport as part of a gathering of our Sport Tourism Group in Dublin on Wednesday, December 14th.
We will also have a look at case studies of some of the events which worked well at attracting visitors to Ireland in 2016 and at what we might do better together in 2017.
