A Preiminary Investigation.docVIP

A Preliminary Investigation of NFL Games and Self-Drive Tourism: Marketing Opportunities for Accommodation Providers Susan Lee Taylor Marilyn Young ABSTRACT. This article addresses the thesis that the presence of an NFL team in a market area creates a unique self-drive (i.e., travel by car) tourism opportunity. Even though the impact of the presence of one or more professional sports teams in a community has been repeatedly studied, the research to date has not looked specifically at the impact on any one industry, or examined the extent to which the self-drive sports fan presents marketing opportunities for the host communities. The purpose of this study is to address these two gaps in the research by investigating the impact of an NFL team’s play dates on lodging industry revenue (i.e., occupancy percentage, average daily rate, revenue per available room and total dollar impact) in the market area and to discuss Susan Lee Taylor is an Associate Professor of Marketing in the College of Business Administration at Belmont University, Nashville, TN. Marilyn Young is an Assistant Professor of Accounting in the College of Business Administration at Belmont University, Nashville, TN. Address correspondence to Susan Lee Taylor, College of Business Administration, Belmont University, 1900 Belmont Blvd., Nashville, TN 37212 (E-mail: taylorsu @). Acknowledgements: The authors would like to express appreciation to Smith Travel Research (STR) for providing the data for the study and taking the time to explain the data collection process. Special thanks also go to Margot Dermody for making the con -tact with STR and securing the data. International Journal of Hospitality Tourism Administration, Vol. 6(3) 2005 Available online at /web/IJHTA ? 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1300/J149v06n03_04 47 destination marketing strategies to increase lodging revenues by targeting the self-drive NFL fan. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Docum