SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sport, Leisure, Tourism, and Events
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1680229
Cultural Heritage and Sports Tourism: A Systematic Literature Review of Sustainable Destination Management Practices
Provisionally accepted
- 1Universitas Samudra, Langsa, Indonesia
- 2Universitas Negeri Semarang Program Pascasarjana, Semarang, Indonesia
- 3Universitas Negeri Medan Pascasarjana Program, Medan, Indonesia
- 4Universitas Negeri Medan, Medan, Indonesia
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This systematic literature review explores the integration of cultural heritage with sports tourism as a promising strategy for sustainable destination management between January 2020 and June 2025. Utilizing the Scopus database and reported following PRISMA 2020, this study synthesized 63 Scopus-indexed peer-reviewed journal articles to examine strategies, benefits, challenges, and governance models. Analysis highlighted commonly reported integration methods, including community-driven thematic events, educational programs, and digital innovations such as virtual and augmented reality technologies. The findings from the included studies indicate reported socio-cultural and economic benefits, such as community empowerment, infrastructure enhancement, and tourism revenue growth. However, challenges like over-commercialization, authenticity dilution, and environmental degradation remain prevalent. Effective governance emerged as crucial for sustainability, across the reviewed literature, emphasizing participatory and collaborative models aligned with Triple Bottom Line and Stakeholder Theories. The study contributes by offering a nuanced understanding of pathways through which cultural heritage sports tourism may support economic prosperity, cultural integrity, and environmental sustainability in specific contexts. Future research directions are recommended, including multi-database, preregistered reviews and longitudinal, regionally comparative analyses, to further validate these findings and address identified limitations comprehensively. This review is limited by a single-database (Scopus-only) search; findings should be interpreted as an exploratory synthesis.
Keywords: cultural heritage1, sports tourism 2, sustainable destination management3, community participation4, digital innovation5, triple bottom line6
Received: 05 Aug 2025; Accepted: 18 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Rangkuti, Bangun, Kurniawan, Hasibuan and Ilham. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yoki Afriandy Rangkuti, yokikenshi@students.unnes.ac.id
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