Challenges And Prospects In The Development Of City Tourism Through Sports In Uganda: A Case Study Of Kampala City

Globally, sports events have been recognized as a strong component of tourism and are becoming an integral and major part of tourism development and marketing strategies for cities as tourism destinations. In Uganda, despite the realization of the importance of sport tourism, present studies have only focused on ecotourism on the countryside; less attention has been paid to city tourism and how the phenomenon of sport impacts on it. This has created need to carry out studies aimed at drawing the attention towards exploring the challenges, opportunities and prospects of developing city tourism by using sport as a development mechanism focusing on a developing economy perspective for instance Uganda.The researcher believes that the conclusions drawn from this research offer recommendations useful in the transformation of the city tourism sub-sector and the tourism industry in general all through using sports a resource that cannot get exhausted. The descriptive survey research design was employed and the study was guided by four specific objectives. The study was delimited to key organizations responsible for sport tourism related activities in Uganda and a target population of 110 participants was purposively selected. These included respondents from the Kampala Capital City Authority, tourism ministry, sports ministry, Uganda Tourism Board; major sports tourism destinations, tourism and travel operators, selected sports federations as well as residents around selected city tourism destinations among others.Respondents were sampled using the purposive, stratified and simple random techniques. In-depth interview guide and semi structured questionnaires validated by experts and pretested were used to collect qualitative data which was analyzed in line with the pertinent literature. The data was organized, coded, analyzed and reported using descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, tables and graphs.Findings revealed that sport plays a very important role in the marketing and development of a city as a tourism destination, and thus it is presently being earmarked as one of the development mechanisms for tourism in the Uganda's capital of Kampala and the whole country at large. However, it was learnt that tourism development it is still dominated by other traditional ways such as wildlife, religious tours and visits to non-sport related tourism spots among other challenges. Consequently, the results shown that terror attacks and threats, economic crisis, political crisis, inadequate sport tourism infrastructure, high oil prices, management difficulties, poor marketing techniques are major challenges entailed in the development of tourism through sports in Kampala.The study recommends creation of a joint ministry of tourism and sports, instituting of a fully-fledged Kampala City Tourism Board with competent and qualified sports and tourism expatriates. The study also recommended formulation, enacting, implementing, and or enforcing of better strategic policies aimed at the funding, promoting; marketing and centered towards the use of sports as a major tourism activity in Kampala.