GOLF AND SPORTS TOURISM IN THE BELEK REGION
GOLF AND SPORTS TOURISM IN THE BELEK REGION

Summary/Abstract: Sports tourism has recently become a significantly and permanently growing part of leisure tourism, with millions of people travelling with the primary motivation of doing physical activities and sports, as well as visiting tournaments and sports museums. The current paper outlines the necessity of the huge investments that were made in the Belek region, Antalya, Turkey in the 1980s, to create a quality seaside resort area. Additional developments starting from the second half of the 1990s, such as the building of golf courses and other sports fields, aimed to open the area towards sports tourism, and bring new tourist segments into the destination. Most of these new facilities belong to luxury resorts to enable them to extend the summer tourist season, and to serve as all-year-round tourist destinations. Due to the new demands and trends in sports tourism, Belek is no longer a golf destination only: it now attracts football and other ball teams, too. Therefore, besides the thousands of golfers plenty of foreign and domestic teams enjoy the mild, Mediterranean climate on the southern coasts of the Turkish Riviera while preparing and training for the coming sports season.

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