The Role of F.C. Barcelona in tourist image of Barcelona

Abstract

The purpose of this study has been to find out what is the role of Football Club Barcelona in the formation of Barcelona’s image as a tourist destination by analyzing what is the behavior of the tourist coming to Barcelona and examining the effect that Barça Brand has on them when planning the trip. The idea of this study is to discover the role that a famous football club as it is nowadays FCB has on the people and learn how their traveling decision can be influenced by it. In order to do find out this information, a conceptual framework has been done taking into account the concept of destination image, a general study of sports tourism and an analysis of the Barça Brand. In order to come to the conclusions, a quantitative technique has been chosen as it allows to know more about what people think and extracts data about the destination image they perceived and the behavior they have towards it. To achieve this data collection surveys were made in different locations of the city of Barcelona. These questionnaires were made to the tourist that were visiting the city during their free time. Moreover, these questionnaires were analyzed using the Likert Scale to know the most common behavior that tourist has about Barcelona. The findings agreed that the influence that FCB has on tourism is big enough to be taken into account. Furthermore, the club was for most of the visitors the main reason for them to come to Barcelona. Camp Nou as a tourist attraction is as well really relevant for the city as it is one of the most visited places by tourist. The image that the football team creates on the destination and its influence in international tourist is significant, as FCB for the majority of the travelers coming is one of the main reasons when they were planning their holidays. Besides, the victories of the football team are not so relevant when this decision was made. To conclude, image of Barcelona is strongly affected by what FCB cause on tourist.