A conceptual paper on motivations of sporting event tourists in Vanuatu

Sport event tourism is important in terms of its appeal and ability to generate travel and tourism related benefits to destinations (Gibson, 2002a). To understand this type of tourism it is important to study the sport event tourist motives. These motivations can be the push factors referring to motivations originating within the tourist and traditionally considered intangible or intrinsic (Uysal & Hagan, 1993), or pull factors referring to the destination's (or event's) ability to pull or draw the tourist to it (George & Mekoth, 2004). Event tourism has emerged as the fastest growing component of the leisure travel market (Shifflet & Bhatia, 1999). One reason for this growth is that it is seen to be an effective addition to the economic development mix of cities and regions (Burgan & Mules, 1992). In particular sport events can motivate improved amenities and business activities in the city or region (French & Disher, 1997), improve a city or region’s position in the market (Brown, Chalip, Jago, & Mules, 2002), increase the number of visitors to a city or region (Higham & Hinch, 2003), and in some instances reduce the seasonality of tourist visits (Higham & Hinch, 2003). Hence the purpose of this paper is to identify the gaps in the current literature on motivations of sporting event tourists focusing on the push and pull factors in relation to the various types of events in relation to Vanuatu. Keywords: Sport event tourism, motivations, push and pull factors.