Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Ph.D. Student, Sport Management Department, Faculty of Sport Sciences, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

2 Associate Professor, Sport Management Department, Faculty of Sport Sciences, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

3 Assistant Professor, Faculty of physical education, Isfahan University, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

Experience as the core product of tourism can create a competitive advantage for tourism destinations which is difficult to replace and imitate. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of tourism experience quality on perceived competitiveness and behavioral intentions of foreign sport tourists. The statistical population of the study consisted of all foreign sport tourists traveled to Iran adventure sport tourism destinations in past three years. 245 subjects participated in the study as the statistical sample. Data were collected by tourism experience quality (Meng. 2006), perceived destination competitiveness (Hallmann et al., 2014) and behavioral intentions (Sharma and Nayak, 2019) questionnaires. The structural equation modeling method was used for data analysis. The results showed that the tourism experience quality could affect Iran perceived competitiveness, and consequently, perceived competitiveness could affect the behavioral intentions of sport tourists. Based on these findings, it could be concluded that the perception of sport tourists from Iran competitiveness as a sport tourism destination can be enhanced by improving the tourism experience quality at all phases of travel from travel planning to post-travel and ultimately have a positive impact on their future behavioral intentions.
 

Keywords

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