Managing Sports for Domestic Tourism Promotion in the African Context

This chapter explores the management of sport tourism events as a tool for tourism marketing and development an emerging African destination. Specifically, it examines the generation of relevant policies and guidelines by the authorities at a local level for enhancing the socio-economic impacts of sports tourism on host communities. Research, the sustainability of the sports tourism sector and its role in sustainable domestic tourism promotion is largely lacking. Adopting a mixed-method research paradigm consisting of interviews and a survey, this study explores stakeholder perspectives regarding the use of sports as a sustainable means to promoting domestic tourism in Cameroon, the case study. Key findings reveal that there exists an opportunity for sport to be leveraged for the promotion of domestic tourism, provided that the key impediments to this are addressed accordingly. The findings also provide a set of recommendations that are geared at aiding in the management of sport tourism events in particular, at the local and national levels, which in the long-term may serve the national agenda for developing domestic and regional travel and tourism.