The Intentions of International Tourists to Attend the 2016 Rio Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games: A Study of the Image of Rio de Janeiro and Brazil

This paper investigates how hosting a mega sports event such as the 2016 Rio Games – Olympic and Paralympic influence the Rio de Janeiro and Brazil image’ like popular destinations among tourists.

The following hypotheses guided our research to identify the more positive image of Brazil as a tourism destination.

A mixed research design combining both qualitative and quantitative approaches was used. Participants were recruited at the Technische Universität München and in the city center of Munich, Germany. The two dimensions (cognitive and affective) of the tourism destination image were considered to elaborate a questionnaire survey, which mixes both qualitative and quantitative methods.

The significant factors influencing the intentions of a person to attend the Games in Brazil are the positive portrayed image of the country and their sport interest. According to the multiple regression conducted, the only variables, which have influenced people’s intention to go to Brazil for the Olympics, were the image of the country as a tourism destination (β = 0.404, p < 0.05) and sports interests (β = 0.259, p < 0.05). The same influence of these variables was observed when the independent variable is the intention to go for the Paralympics: an image of Brazil as a tourism destination (β = 0.377, p < 0.05) and sports interest (β = 0.205, p < 0.05) have influenced respondentchr('39')s intention.

Furthermore, the study revealed the hosting of the Olympic Games had a more considerable influence on a person’s intentions to visit the country than the hosting of Paralympic Games. It was also observed that the media played a significant aspect in the construction of an opinion on a tourism route. Also, a semantic analysis presented a different image’ of the country, even when the intention to attend the Olympics was low.