Enhancing Sports Tourism Competitiveness of Iran through the Tourism Experience Quality

Although sports tourism in our country has attracted a lot of attention as an evolving industry, researches in the field of destination management and marketing are still limited. The purpose of this study was to investigate the enhancing of sports tourism competitiveness of Iran through the tourism experience quality. The research method was descriptive-correlational. For this purpose, 245 sports tourists which travelled to Iran as a sports tourism destination, completed two questionnaires about the perceived destination competitiveness (Hallman et al., 2014), and the tourism experience quality (Meng, 2006). Questionnaires validity were evaluated and approved by experts (content validity), and structural equation modelling (construct validity). Smart-PLS software was used for data analysis. The findings indicated that the quality of different phases of tourism experience including pre-travel planning, en-route, on-site and post-travel reflection, can enhance the perception of sport tourists from Iran's competitiveness as a sports tourism destination. Hence, it can be concluded that tourism experience is not solely limited to the boundaries of a tourism destination and involves from the moment of decision to travel until returning from it; and providing high-quality tourism experiences in all phases, will enhance the tourists' perceptions from Iran's sports tourism competitiveness, and achieve a competitive edge among the alternative sports tourism destinations.