India has immense potential for Sports Tourism but needs infrastructure development and proper marketing for its promotion, experts said today.
At a roundtable meeting here on 'Sports Tourism in India: The Country is Game!', sportspersons and administrators said a systematic approach involving the government and sports bodies in the country was required to realise the potential.
Ace golfer and thrice Asian Tour winner Gaurav Ghei rued limited participation of the people in the game and said golf courses should be thrown open to the public.
"India is a popular golf destination. It's becoming one of the greatest sports in India and golf is a multi-billion industry. However, there is an immense need to improve the infrastructure at golf courses. It is quite unreasonable for a golfer to pay for playing the sport," he said.
"Golf courses in India are open for only members, bankers or selected group of people. For a non-member it becomes very expensive and difficult to pay through his pocket. In India, we must have tourism friendly golf courses. Here land is very expensive and it is not easy to get open spaces for golf courses. To run the golf industry in India, it is very important to introduce online booking facility. The overall golfing experience should be made much more enjoyable."
All India Tennis Association President Anil Khanna said that the campaign for IPL 'Brand India' has been great which can be magnified further for other sports as well.
"Tennis is a great tourism attraction all over the world and there is a need to have better marketing strategies for making Tennis more tourism friendly," he said.
The speakers felt that promotion of Sports Tourism can be done through: i) high visibility of sports promotion in electronic media, print media and brochures; ii) sports Infrastructure development, iii) government tourists offices abroad should create more awareness on sports tourism; more awareness should be created between tour operators and sports associations; iv) marketing of sports tourism should be greatly improved.
