SPORT TOURISM DESTINATION MANAGEMENT MODEL: THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK KHON KAEN INTERNATIONAL MARATHON

Abstract

In Thailand, tourism invents important contribution to national revenue and employment whereby sport tourism is a new form of tourism that tourists’ characteristic is raising awareness of health, environment and social responsibility. This exploratory research of the sport tourism despite of lacking management skills and experiences, unsystematic, and limited only in the southern part of the country as an abundant of sport resources and tourism resources. This research study is objectively to extend and develop sport tourism in the northeast by exploring a sport tourism destination management conceptual framework of Sport Tourism Types Model (Weed, M. and Bull, C., 2004) and Psychological Continuum Model (Funk, 2009) as a tool to develop Khon Kaen International marathon event to be a hub of sport tourism destination. The model takes into account an effective role of management functions on sport tourism that engage marathon runners to the events, and promotes tourism in northeast of Thailand to commence sport tourism destination. The proposed model, supported by extant literature, present a relationship between 1) Sport tourism destination elements 2) Marathon runner behavior, constraints by time and income 3) Marathon runners characteristic, imply stage of engagement 4) Management functions of sport tourism, including organization management, marketing management and communication management and 5) Stakeholders, divided into four groups including sport tourism experts, event provider, event sponsors and marathon runners. This conceptual model provides a contribution to a researcher by providing an overview of effective management function for developing a sport tourism destination management model.