Prospects for sports tourism development in the Caspian region

• Autor(a) principal: Aliyeva, Nigar
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11960/1338
• topic: Tourism product; Sports tourism; Caspian region (Azerbaijan); Produto turístico; Turismo desportivo; Região Cáspia (Azerbeijão)

Azerbaijan is a country rich in natural, cultural and built heritage with potential to become an appealing tourism destination. This heritage richness is also found in the Caspian region where improved infrastructure could turn it into an ideal desti-nation for sports tourism, particularly water-based. However, just because it has rich natural and cultural heritage and infrastructure for pursuing this type of tourism does not mean that the Caspian region has been successful in developing this tourism potential. The Caspian region has not focused on the sports tourism prod-uct because of the low number of facilities and organized activities in the region. However, this product is argued to present considerable potential due to fast changes taking place in Azerbaijan, including the building of new infrastructure and facilities. Furthermore, no research has taken place on the development of sports tourism in this region. This dissertation is a pioneer study on this specific form of tourism in Azerbaijan and the Caspian Region. The dissertation aims to determine the current situation and identify ways of de-veloping sports tourism in the Caspian region. Online research was conducted for obtaining secondary data on available resources and infrastructure. Results sug-gest that considerable attention needs to be given by tourism planners if sports tourism in the Caspian region is to flourish. This study is expected to draw atten-tion to the need for an innovative approach to tourism development in Azerbaijan and more particularly to sports tourism in the Caspian region.