Africa-Press – Eswatini. In recent times, we have seen a desirable surge in the number of sports and adventure events that attract throngs of local and regional visitors and their diversity and international flair have turned Eswatini into an events tourism destination, something which is positive for the industry, and the economy by extension.
The relationship between sport and adventure tourism, in our case, is inextricably interwoven, as typified by such adrenalin-filled athletic events like the Border to Border Cycling, Kings Golf Cup Tournament, Imbube Marathon, Ingwenyama Cup, Swazi Rally, Golden Foot, Imvelo MTB Classic, MTN Khemani among many other competing and complimentary events.
The Eswatini Tourism Authority (ETA) is enthralled to see the professional organisation and running of these events, as their sustainability aids us in further marketing the country as a destination that caters for a broad spectrum of tourism activities.
Our tourism bouquet as a nation has become so rich over the years such that it justifies our new thinking that Eswatini cannot just be a transit destination, as had been the case, but the ultimate destination, which deserves to be top of mind for both travel planners and consumers.
We commend organisers of these various events for their sterling work and would encourage them to share pre and post success stories of their events with us, in order to escalate the same to our global audiences and markets through our various marketing and media platforms.
In demystifying sport tourism and its value, readers would be interested to know that both mega and small-scale sport tourism have potential to contribute to the social, cultural, economic and infrastructural development of our country. Sport tourism involves the travel of persons for non-business reasons to participate and or observe sporting activities.
In addition to either participating and or observing sporting events, persons who travel for sport tourism may also have a vested interest in visiting state of the art sporting facilities such as stadiums, and golf courses, among others. A few years ago, ETA hosted UK-based professional golfers, courtesy of Sense Africa, who were able to tour and write about some of our golf courses.
This generated interest from more golfers globally to consider visiting Eswatini, not just primarily for golfing, but for fusing golfing as part of their broader itinerary while in the country.
Sport tourists may not always be interested in traditional competitive sports and may find adventurous activities far more inviting and appealing to their leisure taste. Some of these adventurous activities may include zip line canopy tours, hiking trails, water adventures, and golf.
Sport tourism offers several economic benefits to local communities and the country. Visitors get to generate enormous economic activity through different forms of expenditure on sporting and non-sporting activities while in the country. The hospitality industry gets to benefit from such activities, as demand for accommodation, food, gaming, and other facilities gets to increase.
We are grateful to various sporting entities, including government, for committing to developing existing and new sporting facilities in the country, as this would enable the country in the near future to bid for hosting bigger sporting events in the country.
These do not just attract the competing athletes as tourists, but fans from respective participating countries as well. Consequentially, there will be an increase in demand for sporting paraphernalia such replica tee shirts, sneakers, etc., while non-sporting products expenditure in food, beverages, phones, cameras, and other electronic accessories that are associated with travellers will also increase.
Adventure and sport tourism provides the host country with high media coverage. This coverage is not only limited to the sporting event but also provide important information about the country’s cultural and entertainment locations as well as the overall country profile.
ETA also gets to host regional and international media to cover such events, and develops itineraries that further expose visiting media to our wide tourism offering in the country.
Some of the media we have hosted in the past years specifically for sports and adventure events include the Golf Trader Magazine, Men’s Health Magazine, Ride Magazine and Country Life Magazine from South Africa, as well as Wanderlust from the UK.
The value we got from the resultant mileage outweighed the cost of hosting the same media by far.
It is such publicity that helps the marketing of the country to more people in our traditional and new source markets.
These events are becoming good occasions to showcase the cultural heritage of Eswatini, such as our history, historical sites, food, music, art, architecture and the overall uniqueness of our country and kindle peoples` interest to want to return in the immediate future, while they remain tourism ambassadors of the country for a long time.
Sport tourism does not only result from the visiting and expenditure from tourists but also involves the development of local infrastructure such as stadia, hotels, transportation networks, roads, telecommunication, airports and other infrastructure. Such developments provide long term benefits to communities where they have been established.
Whereas locals are encouraged to attend these events en masse, we strongly advise that we continue to show visitors our usual love and friendliness, in order to ensure that they not only remember the event, but the people of Eswatini too.
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