Applying the tourist area life cycle within sport tourism: the case of Stellenbosch and German athletes.

The popular tourist town of Stellenbosch in South Africa has long been a favoured training destination for European athletes during the northern hemisphere winter months. This paper considers the case study of German athletes - one of the most prominent groups to train in Stellenbosch since the early 1990s. The analysis involves the application of the concept of the Tourist Area Life Cycle (TALC) to the town’s sport tourism offering. In this regard Stellenbosch continues to experience notable demographic changes, not all of which are related to tourism. The impact of these changes is considered in the context of the factors which have historically made the town a sought-after destination for high performance athletics training camps. Consequently this paper offers an analysis of Stellenbosch’s current and future attractiveness as far as this particular dimension of sport tourism is concerned. This is an important consideration given the availability of alternative training destinations both in South Africa and internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]