Schumacher, Dr Michael (Orange County Probation Department, CA)

Networking within the Tourism Industry: Can Mega Sport Events facilitate regional cooperation? Schumacher, Dr Michael (Orange County Probation Department, CA)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject Tourism, grade: 1,8, International University of Applied Sciences Bad Honnef - Bonn, language: English, comment: Englische Ausarbeitung von Einflüssen von Mega Sport Events (FIFA Weltmeisterschaften und Sommerolympiaden) auf die Zusammenarbeit im Tourismus. Dabei liegt die Konzentration auf regionaler Zusammenarbeit, auch lokale und natioanel Kooperation wird aber angessprochen. Die Arbeit bietet, nach einem theoretischen Teil inkl. Literaturübersicht zu diesem Thema, explorative Experteninterviews mit Organisatoren vergangener und zukünftiger Mega Sport Events aus der Tourismusbranche. Diese Interviews und die daraus gezogenen Schlüsse bilden den Kern und die wichtigsten Erkenntnisse der Arbeit. , abstract: As research around the impacts of Mega Sport Events on host cities and regions reached is peaking in the aftermath of the FIFA World Cup 2006, the UEFA European Football Championship 2008 and the Beijing Summer Games 2008 the topic of cooperation and networking has been widely neglected in regard to MSEs. With the focus on the tourism industry of hosting regions, this work tries to start to change this, as an exploratory approach towards finding out more about the interrelationship of those two topics in tourism. As both, MSEs and cooperation are gaining more and more interest within tourism research this should also be seen as an approach to combine both to motivate further research. Methodologically this is realized by conducting expert interview with five industry experts with valuable experience in preparing, hosting and also benefiting from a Mega Sport Event. The expert interview, as the primary research part of this work is based on the cooperation concept of Axelrod's game theory. This basis was used to design, conduct and analyze the primary research part of this thesis. Essentially, the thesis should be interpreted as a scientific approach to present the combination of the topics of Mega Sport Eve