The Mediating Role of Major Sport Events in Visitors’ Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction, and Intention to Revisit a Destination

Sport events represent a popular motive for travel and can bring a huge influx of visitors with multiple benefits for a destination. The purpose of this article is to analyze the effect of previous experience with the destination on future behavior in the form of intention to visit/revisit it and to shed more light on the relationship between visitors’ satisfaction and their future revisit intentions depending on their previous experience with the destination and the sporting event. The research setting was EuroBasket 2015, Zagreb, Croatia (EB), the largest and the most important basketball competition for national teams in Europe. A face-to-face survey with visitors of each of the 15 played games was conducted on site. In total, 765 questionnaires were collected. For the purpose of this paper, only foreign visitors (461 questionnaires) were included in the analysis. The connection between past experience and future intention to visit was tested with Pearson’s chi-squared test, differences in satisfaction levels—using the t-test for independent samples. In the next step of the analysis, we performed an analysis of impact asymmetry (IA) and of impact range (IR). The necessary input data were obtained through an OLS regression model with binary-coded dummy variables. The results showed that repeat visitors are more likely to express an intention to revisit the destination than first-time visitors, but the level of total satisfaction with EB was the same for both groups (first-time visitors and repeat visitors). The most influential event attributes for overall satisfaction were organization of EB in general, layout of the arena, and preparation of the city for the event. The study expanded the theoretical understanding of the visitors’ satisfaction with sporting event attributes as well their intention to revisit the destination.