Focusing on Resort Sport Tourism Development: The Case of Costa Navarino

Greece, as a top Mediterranean destination, has seen a rapid increase in tourist arrivals during the economic crisis, remaining a strong ‘player’ on the European market. Costa Navarino resort in Messene presents a promising as well as daring private initiative effort in the direction of developing and promoting sport tourism as an upgraded tourism promise. Focusing on sport tourism, especially in golf and quality leisure tourism seems to depart from the ‘four S’ tourism product type. The aim of the research is to examine the development and practices of sport tourism within a resort environment especially examining the ‘elite’ sport tourist as suggested at Weed’s sport tourism participation model. The case study approach has been applied focusing on this enormous sport tourism development in need to deeply examine the uniqueness of the case. The results highlighted that the new development largely based the core product on the ‘elite’ side of the sport tourism spectrum through the creation of luxury facilities and the provision of high quality sport infrastructure such as golf and specific profile events. Focusing on developing quality active sport participation in the resort setting, Costa Navarino aims to establish the site as a destination for elite sports tourism.