It is known that the Nice region is both a sporting and tourist area. These two characteristics could or should be an advantage for generating significant economic impact. True, provided that decision-makers and stakeholders are aware of this and that all together they decide to implement an offer policy and management capacity, both of which are appropriate to the issues. This is not the case today.
A book has just been released on this subject, written with the expertise and educational insight (capacity for analysis and proposal) of Bernard Massiera, a professor at the Faculty of Sports Science (UFRSTAPS) at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (UNS). We asked its author to kindly introduce it to us.
While growth in sports consumption is observed in France, the development of its offer in tourism takes time to structure. This paradox raises a communication-related question about the causes of this issue. The identity of sports professionals plays a central role in it.
Their identity construction relies on the intrinsic values conveyed by the social representation of sport. Faced with the commercial materiality of tourism, sports professionals undergo a process of cultural resistance.
This phenomenon encourages exploration of how organizations typically confront these resistances. Any rationalization of professional activity generates a feeling of deskilling and lack of social recognition among employees in return.
This feeling is even more pronounced when organizations use an instrumental model to manage their corporate culture. Professionals identify more with the social representation of their profession than with its materiality.
Six case studies validate this approach. When organizations transform their professional materiality, they accompany it with communication that values the actors’ profession. This similarity in communication actions reflects the existence of an identity quest. Twenty interviews refine the specificity of this construction in sports tourism and allow for its modeling. The actors, faced with the constraints of a materiality they refute, enter into a resistance process.
This process is asserted in the authenticity of the communication they build with their clients. This identity construction meshes the professional materiality of the sports tourism organization and the intrinsic values conveyed by sports actors.
These particularities are noticeable and oppose the trivialization of the offer by maintaining a social representation of sport that consumers perceive.
