by Albert Postma & Simona Stafieri
We think there are chances for watersports in Friesland in niche markets such as the regions Barcelona, Marseille and Milan; destinations Groningen Airport Eelde since 2012 supports through scheduled flights.
Italian sailing in numbers
Sailing appears to be a popular sport in Italy. In 2009, 638 organzation were connected to the Italian Sailing Federation (ISF). The number of registered sailers was higher than 99.000 and more than 8.000 instructors were recorded. Surprisingly, almost half (48%) of the 320 sailing schools in Italy are located in the North of Italy.The ISF conducted a research in 2007-2008 in collaboration with the Univerity of Rome Tor Vergata. The outcomes demonstrate that -compared to the population size- only New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, Finland and Denmark rank higher in sailing sports activity than Italy. The countries with the highest amount of sailors are the USA, Germany and Italy, having an established nautical market. It was estimated that 122.000 people, from an age of 14 years on, sail in Italy. However the biggest part of sailors is 35+. Similar to the sailing schools these sailors are concentrated in the North of Italy. Generally they belong to a higher social economical class thus people with a relative high disposable income and a high social status.
According to estimation, more than 1.8 million youth is interested in sailing. Therefore the ISF recognizes the significatn value of promotion, and pays a lot of attiontion to promote, especially towards youth. As sailing can be practised in every life stage, people who once started sailing will continue to do so over years. By stimulating demand of youth, the sailing federation longs for a constant boost.
Expert interviews
In Italy two interviews are held with experts from the field of sailing sports. Regarding the question whether young Italian sailors could be interested in a sailing experience in the North of the Netherlands, the experts explain that weather circumstances are definitely not beneficial for organizing meetings and events. However they state that Northern Netherlands could be a unique meeting area for sailors from all around Europe. If we want Italian sailors to visit Holland, it is highly relevant to do research on all-inclusive trips that offer an important and unique experience incomparable to other destinations. In such a package, supply and demand should perfectly be adjusted to each other where social media could play an important role to support this kind of tourism.Would Italian sailing schools be interested in working together with sailing schools in The Netherlands? According to the experts sailing schools particularly interested in hard sea circumstances could be interested although it concerns a niche market. A format could be helpful fort his. Another opportunity is to involve the ISF with the sailing educations, in order to get insight in the actual chances for the athletes. Moreover it might be effective to get in touch with the European Sailing Federation (EUROSAF) for collaborately organizing sailing events or trips along different locations where sailing organizations provide boats and materials. At last a partnership of sailing schools could be created for teaching for instance the English language next to sailing. It should be taken into account that only modern and innovative sailing school would be capable for this.
The research was conducted by Simona Stafieri, intern at the European Tourism Futures Institute (The Netherlands), working at ISTAT (Italy), working on promotion research on youth tourism.
Sources:
- Coni, 2001; www.velalinks.it/Scuole_di_Vela/Italia/; www.federvela.it/contatti; http://lamiafedervela.blogspot.com/2009/04/dalla-ricerca-vela-e-velisti-2007-20082.html
- Interview with journalist Sports & Business and CEO of SailBiz, SportEconomy group, the portal of the marine economy.
- Interview with journalist Economy and Economist at Associazione Economia Impresa, an organization of companies in the sports branch, Director of Press agency Sporteconomy en professor Sports management)
