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The demand for sport tourism throughout the world has risen in recent years primarily because of a greater emphasis on health and fitness and the increased use of sport events by cities in order to attract sport tourists. Sport tourists are individuals who participate in sport activities while on holiday and can be divided into three categories:
Event participants, whose number one purpose in traveling is to take part in an organized sport event.
Event spectators, whose main purpose is to watch an organized sport event.
Sport lovers, who travel in order to take part in "self-organized" sports.
In light of the great interest of tourists in sport vacations, several sport clubs, such as Club Med, have been established in recent years, offering a variety of sports activities. The most popular sports among such tourists are swimming, tennis, sailing, and windsurfing.
But despite the increasing demand for sports vacations, only a handful of hotels throughout the world actually market themselves as a sports-lover's paradise of any kind. The Isrotel Hotel Management Group provides a unique example of a hotel based entirely on the idea of fulfilling the dreams of active sport tourists.
The purpose of this case study is twofold. First, to trace the corporate communication process implemented by the management of Isrotel Hotels in their effort to build the new Sport Club Hotel, focusing on internal and external communications. Second, to describe how the marketing and promotion of sport hotels differ from that of ordinary hotels.
Isrotel's corporate identity strategy
Isrotel is the third largest hotel management company in Israel, with 2,650 rooms in 12 hotels throughout the country. Isrotel has invested heavily in recent years in the implementation of its corporate identity as a response to intense competition from its competitors, Fattals Hotels and Dan Hotels (with 4,500 rooms in 14 hotels and 3,150 rooms in seven hotels, respectively, throughout the country). Dan Hotels, unlike the two other hotel chain management companies, has chosen to reinforce its market positioning using a monolithic corporate identity strategy. According to this strategy, the organization employs a single name, symbol, trade dress and typestyle for all products and divisions. This strategy is common and has been adopted by several well-known chains, including the Carlton Hotel Collection and...