DEPART

The growth of sport tourism shows no sign of slowing down:it is the fastest growing segment within the travel industry (Parker, 2019).According to Neirotti (2003),sports tourism can be broadly described as «Including travel away from one’s primary residence to participate in sports activity,for recreation or competition purposes,travel to observe sport at grassroots or elite level,and travel to visit a sports attraction such as a sports museum, for instance». The impacts of sports tourism and in particular of the organization of major events,tend to create also side effects on the destinations.For example,in the case of sports events,a number of extra trips is created which – often- is incompatible with the capacity of the transport systems (Rubert, 2010).Another particularity of these events is that they are temporarily and therefore any planning decisions need to be based on xed end date solutions.DEPART's focus is on the development of a sustainable sports tourism that builds on the competitive advantages of the involved regions.The project will investigate good practices in sports tourism with regards to(Knop,1987) (i) pure sports holidays, such as skiing in the mountains, marathons, etc (ii) travelling to a resort, where the site has sports facilities, such as tness equipment, and an outdoor environment, (iii) unorganized sports activities, allowing tourists to participate freely during the tourism process, such as beach volleyball, rock climbing, river tracing, etc. The GPs will be looking at a four dimensions typology of sustainable sports tourism: economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, socio-cultural sustainability, and institutional sustainability. The ultimate goal of DEPART is to assist regions in creating strategies that build upon existing and potential areas of competitive advantage, avoiding fragmentation and insularity and linking and leveraging the social sports tourism assets in new and different ways that meet the SDGs objectives.