A survey of the demographic features and sport tourists’ priorities in Iran

AbstractDetermining demographic features and sport priorities is an important issue in sport tourism marketing. So the purpose of this study was to determine the demographic characteristics and preferences of sport tourists in Iran. The research method was descriptive. The sample of study consisted of 177 Iranian and 125 foreigner sport tourists. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect the data (the validity was approved by experienced professors in sport management and its reliability was verified by Cronbach's alpha method, α=0/775). Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data by SPSS. The results showed about 60% of the samples were athlete and most of them were young (27 years in average) and male (%91). Although sport tourists had not good salaries, the money they tend to spent for the trip was nearly equal to their monthly income. Educational degree of most sport tourists (53%) was diploma and lower. First interested area for them was “sea and other water activities” and first interested media for advertising was TV. The most important reason for their travelling was the sport event itself and the favourite season for them was spring