As Formula One has expanded to ever more exotic locations around the world, a new industry has developed: Grand Prix tourism. Mixing attendance at a sports event with tourism is not exclusive to Formula One, but the series at the pinnacle of motor racing with its advanced technology, big business stakes and highly paid drivers and team personnel attracts the kind of clients that travel companies like.
The typical Formula One spectator is affluent and willing to pay for the extras - a party, high-class travel and a few days' travel before or after a race - and travel agencies, Web sites and Formula One itself are nurturing this segment of the travel industry.
"We were targeting the sport, but we were trying to widen the database," said Mariah Feirooz, projects director of etours-grandprix.co.uk, a division of Emerald Global travel. "As a travel agent, we're all targeting petrol heads," the hard-core racing fans. "And there's one way you do it - you fly in and you fly out - but we weren't after that market. We wanted to lengthen the stay beyond three days, because on the long hauls it is just not going to happen."
"So even though we're targeting the race as the main feature, the actual organization of the holiday isn't," she added. "It takes the focus off the racing to do other things - it's more about a destination than just a race."
Her company is promoting the Hungarian Grand Prix on its Web site as "the perfect opportunity to explore one of the most beautiful cities in central Europe."
As cities like Valencia, Abu Dhabi and Singapore and countries like Malaysia and Turkey use Formula One to brand themselves as sports or tourism centers, they are attracting people that might not otherwise have gone there, for tourism during the race, and increasingly, for return visits.
It is the problem of the distance to the new venues from the sport's core audience in Europe that has spurred the trend.
"To fly for at least 12 hours just for a weekend is not going to convince most clientele," Feirooz said. "By the time you go there and back it's a day, or a day and a half with the time difference. So to encourage people to go and see a race, there have to be more elements that we have to offer."
"It's basically, there's more to a race than high-speed cars," she added.
There's also more to her Formula One business strategy - which she started in 2001 - than meets the eye.
"We analyzed our business potential for the Malaysian Grand Prix and there were a lot of females involved in the decision-making process," Feirooz said. "If you targeted the ladies, you'd get a lot more people going. We said to the ladies: 'Why don't you spend three days doing what
you want to do - going to the beach, getting a tan, doing the bar - all that kind of stuff. And then doing the male thing of the race weekend. It worked."
The exchange rates also helped encourage the British clientele as it cost almost as much to do a race in Europe as in Malaysia.
"Where you could spend £500 to £600" - or about $1,000 to $1,200 - "for a race weekend in Europe, you could put it up by £50 to £70 and literally do five nights in Southeast Asia," said Feirooz.
Australia, she said, is another popular destination, and whole families book a trip of two to three weeks around the race to see the country.
Cashing in on tourism runs right through the sport now, because the official Web site, Formula1.com, is also offering a race travel service. The Hilton Hotels chain, which has been a sponsor of the McLaren Mercedes team for the past three years, has created a motor racing club, Hilton Racing.
"With Hilton Racing, we created a promotional entity under which we could market our involvement in Formula One and possibly other motor sports as well," said Robin Fenwick, director of sports sponsorship for Hilton Hotels. "Members get discounted breaks and get exclusive opportunities to come to races."
Trevor Cook, a guide for companies that specialize in Formula One races, said that the Internet - which enables clients to book by themselves without an agency - has reduced business for the traditional travel agencies but increased the number of people attending races as tourism.
Last month, for example, Philip Robinson and Philip Locks, two fans from England who have been doing racing tourism for years, booked their whole trip on the Internet. They attended a MotoGP motorcycle race in Germany a week before the Formula One race at Hockenheim, the German Grand Prix. In between they fed other passions.
"I am interested in military history," Robinson said. "The first day after the MotoGP we went to Colditz Castle, near Leipzig, the famous officer prison camp during the Second World War. It's about 20 or 30 miles from where the motorcycle Grand Prix was held, and there is a museum there. And then we went down to Austria for a few days and then another battlefield - Blenheim battlefield, near Karlsruhe, on the way to Hockenheim."
As a reaction to the lost business from the Internet, Cook said, travel companies create trips that people cannot do by themselves. These include meeting drivers, visiting team factories, talking with Formula One journalists and photographers and other exclusive opportunities.
"It's a chance that the ordinary spectator cannot get, to meet a person from inside the paddock," he said.
Both of the companies that Cook works for, Page & Moy, of England, and Grand Prix Tours, based in Newport Beach, California, offer packages with options for an extra week for tourism.
For the Malaysian race, they add an optional week after the race to go to Thailand or Vietnam or other nearby countries. For the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, they fly clients to Beijing for four days, then take them to the Great Wall and to see the ancient terra-cotta warriors at Xian. That is followed by four days of sightseeing in Shanghai, crowned by three days at the race.
Such trips are not confined to Asia. Cook noted that fans from the United States often combine a week's vacation in Europe with a five-day race tour, because the airplane ticket is the biggest expense.
Cook has a wide-ranging clientele.
"We take 20-year-olds that are dyed-in-the-wool enthusiasts, and we take 70-year-old pensioners that are still dyed-in-the-wool enthusiasts," he said.
He also has a client who attends all 18 races of the season, Cook said.
"He's just a single guy, his only love is Formula One, he just keeps buying the tours," he said.
Plans have just been unveiled for the world’s first sport tourism exhibition. The ground-breaking World Sport Destination Expo will take place during the FIFA 2010 World Cup in the Official Host City, Johannesburg from 5-9 July 2010.
