Case of Qatar: Reducing the oil and gas dependency through the hosting of mega-sport events

Résumé du document

Qatar has built through sport and tourism an image of innovative development, economic power and luxury. Sport events such as golf, horse racing have been developed as instrument to build an image of elitism and affluence. Sport is a very important part of a plan to build the image of Qatar, lead by sport and tourism to leave the dependency on oil and gas. Indeed tourism is one of the principal growth sectors in international services trade. One of the more observable contributions to this growth comes from mega-events. According to Roche (2000) a mega-events is a large-scale cultural events, which have a dramatic character, mass popular appeal and international significance.

Such global events seem to have produced world tourism patterns, emphasizing new tourism destinations, creating legacies in host cities or countries and providing impressions of a host country to spectators from foreign countries, television viewers and users of other information media.

Sport tourism, as a combination of sports and tourism, refers to people going in holiday to practice sport or attending sport events during their holidays. This paper will focus in this latter definition. This sector faces new trends since the 60s which has been fostered by the changes that the tourism industry witnessed, particularly the new trend of tourists who want to experience places that offer new and diverse products. Therefore the combination of tourism and sport made sense and encouraged sport fans to change their traditional destinations by turning toward the countries that are hosting exciting sport events. Collins notes that sport events can provide a tourist focus where nature has failed to do so, or can spread the use of accommodation into off-peak periods or stimulate accommodation provision (Collins 1997))

Extraits

[...] Bendoni states that Qatar has established itself well and truly on the international sports stage, holding many of the world's major sport events. He affirms that 50% of these events are home-grown and notes that the necessary financial resource is available to stage these events (Bendoni (2011)). Sponsorship generated and expertise sought from abroad allow to host sport event in successful and correct approach. Strategy developed by Qatar recognizes the importance of sport in the development of tourism and is set up to cope with international standards and to provide excellence. [...]

[...] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRYhW9wF0Is Authority on World Travel & Tourism (2012) “Travel & Tourism, economic impact 2012, Qatar” World Travel & Tourism Council Authority on World Travel & Tourism (2012) “Travel & Tourism, economic impact 2012, Middle East” World Travel & Tourism Council Bendoni, T (2011), Personal interview, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia June 2011. Collins, M. (1997) economics of sport and sports in the economy: Some international comparisons” Progress in tourism, recreation and hospitality, management, In C. Cooper edition, Vol pp. 184–214 Dionysius, D. (2009, August 29) power of event marketing and sponsorship” Bangkok Post. Retrieved May Available at : http://www.lagunaphuket.com/media-hub/Op-Ed/power- event.php Florek, M., Breitbarth, T., Conejo, F. (2008) “Mega event = Mega impact? [...]

[...] The World Cup was undoubtedly a good opportunity for the economy and the image of the South-Korea. Kim and Morrison stated in their study that the 2002 Fifa World Cup conjointly hosted by the Japan and the South-Korea have had many implications for the South-Korea. First, visitors had more positive impression of the country after than before the sport event suggesting that the World Cup was part of an improvement in the image of the South-Korea as a tourism destination. [...]

[...] Another aspect is the high temperature in Qatar. It will represent a major inconvenient for Qatar. Stadium will have to employ cooling technology to keep decent temperature for athlete and attendees. Moreover, even if Qatar claims to use a zero carbon cooling technology, there are lot of fear concerning ecology consideration during the Fifa World Cup 2022 mainly due to the number of boat taxis necessary to lead attendees to stadium and to the cooling system employed in the stadiums. [...]

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