Yabuli Ski Resort Case Study

Factors influencing sports tourists’ choice to visit a sport tourism destination:

A case study in Yabuli, China

1. Abstract

Background: With the development of economy and the improvement of social and cultural level, people are paying more and more attention to relaxing and experiencing different cultures through tourism. Sports tourism is not only a new tourism product, but also a combination of sports and tourism. Yabuli ski resort, which is Located in Heilongjiang province of China, is a national ski tourism resort.

Problem: There are few research about what factors influence tourists to choose Yabuli ski resort. As the increase of the ski resort, managers began to build new facilities and conduct new marketing campaigns. However, But

Here is the research model.

Figure 1 Research Model

Financial costs are an important factor in deciding to participate in sports events (Zhang et al., 1995). Zhang (2006) found the lower the level of consumption, the higher the acceptability of tourists. The cost of participating in a sports trip includes transportation, accommodation, attractions, tickets and food (Mohan, 2010). Therefore, this paper proposed the Hypothesis 1:

Hypothesis 1: Consumption will have a negative impact on the number of sports travellers to the destination.

Security is the basic condition for the development of tourism and the basic determinant factor of tourism economic growth, which directly influences the tourist activities and tourism aspirations (Wang, 2009). Presumably, sports travelers may be more sensitive to safety problems related to destinations, as many sports are gathered in crowds and / or outdoors, where security is difficult to guarantee (Roche, 2013).

Therefore, this paper proposed the Hypothesis