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Profiling Sports Tourism Tourists in Egypt
Title Doctor
Name Ashraf Samir ELmidani
Scientific Department Sports Management
Specialization Sports Tourism Management
University Arab Academy for Science and Technology

Profiling Sports Tourism Tourists in Egypt
Introduction
The Growing Recognition of Sports Tourism
Sports and tourism are now among the ‘developed’ world’s most sought-after leisure experiences. Just as significantly, these popular social practices have also become very important economic activities. Recent research has indicated that the contribution sports makes to the gross domestic product (GDP) of industrialised nations is between 1 and 2%, while the contribution of tourism is between 4 and 6% (World Tourism Organisation (WTO), 2001). It is no surprise, then, that sports and tourism have each received interest from academics and industry practitioners over recent decades. Curiously, though, scholars have largely overlooked the links and relationships between sports and tourism.
Indeed, the genre of ‘sports tourism’ (of sports generating tourism activity or tourism generating sporting activity) is a recent research development. This emerging scholarly interest in sports tourism reflects, to some degree, a growing awareness within the leisure industry that sports and tourism products have complementary features (Gibson, 1998). To date, though, there is precious little Literature that analyses specific links between sports and tourism, as well as socio-economic impacts and management issues related to this aspect of tourism.
This is partly due to sports tourism traditionally comprising two separate fields of study '' sports and tourism '' with limited integration and discussion between the two academic sub-disciplines and industry sectors. We see a need, therefore, to bring practitioners in both fields closer together, for there is mutual advantage in such collaboration.

There have been some promising developments. A number of...