Prospective tourists’ risk perceptions and intentions to travel to a mega-sporting event host country with apparent risk

Abstract

ABSTRACT While the global appeal of the Olympic Games has attracted a massive amount of attention, this increased focus has resulted in heightened risk occurring around the event. Prospective tourists’ growing anxiety related to terrorism and political instability regarding a travel destination could have serious implications on tourism. This article aims to examine the relationship between tourists’ risk perceptions and their intention to travel to an Olympic host country with apparent risks of terrorism and political instability during and around the event period using the case of the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Games. Terrorism risk was found to have a negative impact on travel intention while political instability did not. The results suggest that potential terrorism risk is a vulnerable point for the host country, and host organisations’ collaborative risk management strategies for minimising potential threats and generating a safe destination image are necessary to attract a higher number of visitors around and during the Olympics. This study contributes to the sport and event tourism literatures by focusing on a specific case. As a result, the findings enable the authors to highlight the impact of terrorism and political instability on travel intentions of prospective tourists to a host country with apparent risks. More specifically, this research discusses the reason(s) for the impact of terrorism and political instability risks on the travel intentions, and calls upon the efforts of future Olympics and mega-sporting event host countries to mitigate the loss of international visitors and to boost global tourism during and after the event.