The Evolution Of Sports Travel

Sports travel is expanding beyond traditional events. From pickleball tournaments to pillow fighting championships, people are seeking unique sports experiences that offer more than just a game to watch. Rob Levine, President of Marriner, and Shannon Gray, CEO of Gray Research Solutions, explore how tourism destinations can capitalize on the latest trends in sports travel.

TRANSCRIPT:

ROB: Now, one of the other things that is just really interesting that I've seen, I know we kind of started off talking a little bit about sports and youth travel, but there also does tend to be travel happening around, I guess what I would call like secondary sports or sports that like didn't exist when we were kids for adults. Like, we're going for a pickleball tournament for instance, or we're heading out of town for an ultimate frisbee retreat.

SHANNON: There's a pillow fighting championship that people are traveling for. PFC. Pillow fighting championship that people are traveling. I mean, that's obviously a really weird one. Pickleball is the one that everybody recognizes now, which is so brand new and has just gone like wildfire.

It's also a really great trend for DMOs to take advantage of because you can easily turn a tennis court into pickleball courts and everybody's got some rec center or some set of tennis courts in their destination that they can turn into pickleball courts. There's quidditch. Which I did not know that that was a real thing. Obviously you can't fly on your broom, but somehow they make it work. Flag football. Quad ball, handball, some of these ball sports, I don't even know what they are, but the point is people are looking for kind of a new unique experience like that. And those kinds of weird, quirky sports are, number one, a way to stay physically active, a way to bond with others, a reason to travel to somewhere you never would have gone in the first place. And just, you know, it's been a very interesting trend why people will travel for sports, not just youth sports.

That's also a really good trend for DMOs because you can use spaces. Like you don't need huge soccer fields to host a soccer tournament, like to host like a dodgeball tournament. You know, you need a gym. You don't need like four or five soccer fields. So that means that destinations that don't necessarily have a big sports facility, like you need for a youth sports tournament, are able to take advantage of sports travel, being creative and using their current spaces.

ROB: You know, one of the things that we've always tried to do as a family is, if we have traveled somewhere for youth sports, we try to take advantage of the fact that we're in a place that we've never been before. So how would you recommend that DMOs kind of, you know, move either, you know, families through the destination who are there for your youth travel, or if it's adults and young adults, you know, coming to play pickleball and Quidditch...How do we make sure that they get, not just from the Hampton Inn to the sports facility? How do we make sure they're doing other things?

SHANNON: That's a great question. A lot of DMOs are dealing with this. And one thing that you don't think about is the way that these tournaments are structured. You know, Rob, that you have a tournament, you're gonna show up at a certain time to play. And then depending on whether you win or lose, you either have your afternoon free or you don't have your afternoon free.

ROB: Parents sometimes pray for losses, just FYI, right?  The final game is Sunday night at six, right?

SHANNON: Right, so the challenge with youth sports travel, you wanna enjoy a destination that you're in or see stuff that you wouldn't normally see because you're probably not gonna come back because for the next several years, you're traveling for sports. They can't plan, that's the problem. They can't plan, we're gonna do this thing at three, we're gonna do this thing at four, this is how we're gonna do our day. It's all up in the air based on whether the team wins or loses. And so the DMO needs to be able to supply them with ideas, possibilities. If you lose, so sorry, but you can go to this museum, and this has a really cool, you know, section that you might find interesting.

We see a lot of the CVBs that I work with. CVB, I don't know if everybody knows this, but CVB stands for Convention and Visitors Bureau. DMO stands for Destination Marketing Organization. So DMO is an umbrella term, convention and visitors bureau is kind of an old term because not everybody has a convention anymore. But they'll show up at these sports tournaments with a table or a booth with visitors' guides and brochures so that people can kind of learn what there is to see and do around the area. What we find is that restaurants do really, really well when there's a sports tournament in town, especially any restaurant that has any kind of games or other kinds of engagement for the kids. Those places do really, really well.

Trampoline, depending on the age of the kids, those kinds of trampoline, activity stuff goes really well. We don't see a lot of youth sports folks going to like history museums and cultural museums. They're more likely to look for those social activities because it's the whole team now, right? If you lose, you got a whole team of sports. Whatever sports ball, we call it in my house because I don't know all the sports. So sports ball folks have to go entertain their whole team for an afternoon. So you have to kind of get creative and figure out like in every travel, who is my target audience? Who is this audience? What kind of travel do they want? What are they looking for? And how do I meet that need for them? How do I maybe keep them here a little bit longer? How do I make them spend a little extra money? What's going to send them away being super happy that they were here in this destination? They were here for sports, but we left them with a really great experience. And you know, that is a big deal. You have all these folks coming into your town. If you can leave a really good impression on them, leave them wanting more. They're more likely to come back later once the kids out of school and they don't have to do the sports travel anymore. Then, couple years down the road, you'll get those empty nesters back into your destination and check out what they missed.