Analysing the Motivation of Visitors Attracted and Involved in Rio Olympics 2016.

Svilen Lalev Higher Diploma in International Hospitality and Tourism Management HTMi Switzerland

Introduction
For many decades, people have been travelling for big sport events (Keller, 2001). The modern Olympic Games are a mega sport event since 1896 in Greece. The Games are still alive after two World Wars, terrorists attacks in Munich (1972), riots in Mexico City (1968) and many different world wide problems (Groote, 2005). This shows that the games have a significant importance for a countrys economy and historical value. Next summer Olympic games will take place for the first time in South America, the city of Rio de Janeiro is the proud host. In the preparation there will be more than 100,000 people involved (europaralympic, 2012). The expected number of visitors is 1 million (sevenpillarsinstitute, 2012). Swarbrooke and Horner (2007) are the researchers who made some findings about the motivation and behaviour of the travellers. The study shows how the motivation and determinants influence the decision making process of the travellers. The Push and Pull theory is a popular way for realising travel motivation. This model gives a very useful approach to examining the different factors, which affects travellers behaviour and motivation (Kim and Lee, 2002). The model of Push and Pull factors is a way to understand the motivation of travellers, and why they choose exact destination, the push factors usually stimulate and urge a description of travel, while pull factors more specifically influence the exact choice of destination since the starting push is already given. Push originated generally from the willingness to travel (Dann, 1977). When a big sport event like Olympic Games is a push factor the pull factor which is the city or the country where the games will be held is not that important (etoa, 2012).

One of benefits of the Olympic games host cities is that the games attract people who would not normally come to the city (etoa, 2005). These visitors are not like normal tourists, having different spending and behaviour patterns, they are more travellers. The main difference is that they are not interested in tourism. They are interested in the sport event (etoa, 2005). According to Swarbrooke and Horner (2007) tourists and travellers are completely different words for visitors, which have distinct motivation to travel. There are many studies done: why people are motivated to visit some destination (Muller, 1991). The consumer is that person who is motivated to use a product or service, which he/she is interested in- (Mafeld and Pizam, 2000). There are many different theories of consumer segmentation, and the main reasons to choose travel destinations (Swarbrooke and Horner, 2007). Mansfeld and Pizam (2000)

confirmed that there is a lack of information of the consumers going to visit a destination because of a big event like the Olympic Games. Are they motivated to spend money on leisure and entertainment or the goal is only to be part of the sport event? Does the sport influence people to travel and is it primary, secondary or tertiary reason? (Hinch and Higham, 2003). The author is motivated to do this research since the researcher is interested in sport events and organizing them and why people are visiting them although some of the visitors are not even attracted to the sports. Are they motivated because they are spectacular or because of the event itself?

Motivation to Travel
In order to understand the behaviour of the tourists and what the main reasons for traveling are, it is useful to know what their motivation is and what kind of

different factors have been taken into consideration (Cooper et al., 2005). Swarbrooke and Horner (2007) have mentioned several authors discussions of how the tourists behaviour is influenced by the motivation. There are seven categories with different travel motivations (Dann, 1981). Crompton (1979) granted with Dann, concerning his seven categories theory but he deepens the theory and sets nine motives to travel. However if the difference is not specified by the researcher between the two theories Dann (1981) and Crompton (1979) they can be really perplexing. On the other hand according to Supovitz (2005) travelling has been set as a want or need satisfier. One of the first and the most used theories about motivation is the Maslows needs hierarchy (figure 1).

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs (Maslow, 1970). - Figure 1

However, Hinch and Higham (2004) argued that it is inadequate to understand the behaviour of travellers only with developing theories about different needs. From big importance also is to understand from what factors is the choice of destination affected. Therefore suggested by Dann (1981) are push and pull factors in the decision making process.

Important thing is to take into consideration that with all the approaches mentioned above, and with all the others, a single motive cannot be set as the reason for travelling, although one can take advantage in front of the others (Gammon and Robinson, 2004). Mostly the peoples trips are composite of

different motivation factors, and always one of the motives stands in front of the others (Swarbrooke and Horner, 2007). Hence the motivation of travelling is union between sub-conscious and conscious traveling reasons, which can show the intricacy of this research.

Push and Pull Factors in Tourism Industry

Travellers motivation books have mainly discussed the theory of Pull and Push factors (Lam and Hsu, 2006). The theory explains what are the reasons for going on a holiday, what would the wants and needs of the traveller be (Baloglu and Uysal, 1996). The push factors show the desire to escape, the motivation to travel for relaxation, rest, sport and adventure.

Travel-Buyer Behaviour (Lam and Hsu, 2006). - Figure 2 As it is shown in figure number 2 the desire and the need to travel is coming before all other steps. On the other hand Pull factors have been considered as the attractiveness of the destination and all the tangible characteristics of the place (Uysal and Jurowski, 1994).

Hu and Ritchie (1993) discovered 16 different aspects that contribute to how attractive one destination would be, based on their research they found out that the information of the certain destination and the purpose for travel would influence the result to the whole groups. Jeong (1997) came up with another six factors, which pull the tourists, taking as an example, national parks. The factors are infrastructure, entertainment, physical environment, and the last one is high profiles entertainment opportunities (Kim et al., 2003). Some of the most important Pull factors during a big sport event such as the Olympic Games might be: watch the team from your county, be part of the whole event, enjoying the nice weather (Hinch and Higham, 2004). All further researches showed many different types of pull factors which depend on the tourists motivation and typologies and also the choice of destination. Push and Pull factors have been considered as two mainly different decisions, which are made in different time; the first one is asking whether to go? And the second one where to go? Though the two factors seems to be different and independent, according to Dann (1977) there is a relation between them, because before choosing actually the destination for traveling you must have the need, want or the desire for that trip. Hence the push and the pull factors should be together not analysed separately. The push factors are these, which have the internal element of the people while the pull is the external (Uysal and Juriwski, 1994). Nonetheless, when the push factors are the demand side, which helps to understand the decision, making process of the tourists, pull factors hence will be the supply side (Kim and Lee, 2002). As mentioned before it is proved that the correlation between the two factors is very important in order to understand the decision making process.

The Strategic Benefits of Sport Tourism on a Destination

At this stage of the literature review the researcher goes deeper in to what are the motives of the people who visit big sport events such as the Olympic games. According to Gammon and Robinson (1997), sport tourism should be considered as a consumer motivation approach. Sport tourism has many approaches about motivation and many of them are similar to the extensive tourism motivation theories, for example recuperation and also escaping from daily life (Hench and Higham, 2004). Anyway there are some motives, which are very distinct, and these are particularly for sport, like willingness for winning and to share your experience together with different people, which have the same interests and competitiveness as well (Weed and Bull, 2004). Wann et al. (2001) deepens the motives and offers the 8th most general sport motives: family, eustress, economic motives, entertainment, escape, group affiliation, self-esteem and group affiliation, these 8th motives are popular as Sport Fan Motivation Scale also (SFMS) they were used to inspect the exact motivation of the visitors of the Olympic Games. Within this research a couple of studies were done to insure that the Sport Fan Motivation Scale is valid. Then the (SFMS) model has been used by many researchers to develop different scales linked with sport tourism motivation (Milne and McDonald, 1999). Frunk et al. (1999) developed scale, which measures the motivation for being part from the Olympics. The scale is called Sport Interest Inventory (SII) and has nine factors which are; player interest, sport interest, drama, socialization, team interests, achievement, national pride, excitement, vicarious achievement. Studies show that; player interests, sport interests, team interests, and excitement from the city and the event itself are the most important things for the visitors (Funk et al., 2001).

Observing these results the marketing strategies done by the marketers will develop new advertising campaigns to attract more customers for the next Olympics and other huge sport events (Hinch and Higham, 2004). These examples show the intricacy of different sport tourism motivation factors and consequently it is unreal to identify all the motives investigated in both tourism and sport (Weed and Bull, 2004).

Analysing the Motives of Sport Tourists in the Literature. What is done and what is not?
Like many different areas of academic study, much research that can be used within the research paper was done during the years of this topic. Many studies looked at the difference between people who are participating in the event and people attending the event and their motives accordingly (Gibson, 1998). However studies have been done also on the motivation when the sport tourists choose a destination (Robinson and Gamma, 2004). Lastly some work investigated portrayed sport tourism as a way to develop the economy of the host country. Weed and Bull (2004) researched different ways of developing sport tourism on a small island. However Lim and Patterson (2008) looked at the impact of the Olympic Games and both agreed that this is a big opportunity for the economy of the country. According to Weed (2006), studies that have been published in books or journals are not that clear to the massive readers rather than to the companies that funded them. Cooper et al. (1998) stated that though the amount of research is adequate the quality of the work is low.

Gibson (2004) said that the majority of the researches in the area of the sport tourism at all are more likely to be focused on the behaviour of the consumers rather than trying to understand the deeper motivation. Lastly it can be said that the area of the sport tourism research is well covered but the works should be more accurate (Coltman, 1989).

Background: Rio Olympic Games 2016

The next summer Olympic Games will be hosted by the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This was announced at the 121st international Olympic committee session, which was held in Denmark, Copenhagen in 2009 (Olympic, 2012). The games are scheduled from 5th of August to 21st of August, for the first time the summer games will be held during the winter in the host city. This is also the first time for a South American country to hold the event (telegraph, 2012). The Brazilian government will invest nearly $11 billion. The Olympic park will include 17.700 beds in 9.460 bedrooms and more than 48 buildings with up to four bedroom apartments (foxnews, 2012). Till 2016 the Rio metro will be extended with 14km more, with six more underground stations the transport system will be able to carry 240,000 passengers every day (dailymail, 2012). A new sport will be introduced after a gap of 113 years golf will be played again (huffingtonpost, 2012). The motto of the games is Live your passion or in Portuguese it is Viva Sue Paixao (hollywoodreporter, 2012).

Conclusion and Recommendations

The aim of this research paper is to investigate the exact motivation of traveling to the Olympics 2016. The writer has reviewed different motivation theories, and found that there is much research done but the researches needs to be more precise. The quantitative methods were chosen for the primary research in order to understand the motives for travelling, and make the topic more understandable. However like all researches there can be some limitations with the collection of the data. Furthermore because the topic is trying to investigate motives for attending a future event it is difficult for the researcher to find out the right research and sources of information.

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