1. Event Tourism

Event tourism captures the nexus between events and tourism and has been variously defined as the ‘development and marketing of events for tourism and economic development purposes’.

The relationship between events and tourism can be mutually beneficial, but rarely will this be possible without an informed approach to event planning and destination planning. 

There is global competition to attract major events because of the economic benefits that they bring. Events can contribute to a city’s range of tourist attractions, facilitate media coverage for the destination, and promote awareness of the destination for future visitation. Most events are small, of limited duration and create minor, but not necessarily insignificant, impacts. Any changes that occur must be considered about the size of the community that is affected. A modest improvement to make facilities suitable to host an event may dramatically change local attitudes and the image presented to potential visitors. Mega events – such as the Olympic Games – can be the catalyst for urban development and the stadiums that are constructed to stage the sporting competitions become symbols that convey national values, a reflection of how the host country wishes to be seen by the rest of the world.

Governments now support and promote events as part of their strategies for economic development, nation building and cultural tourism. In turn, events are seen as an important tool for attracting visitors and image-building within different communities. Researchers believe that many countries and destinations fail to recognise the advantages of events and are often unable to manage negative images and publicity. They also state that due to rising competition, tourist regions and communities should strategically plan to achieve their environmental, social and economic objectives.

2. Using Events as Destination Management Tools 

To promote your location as an attractive travel destination, you need to beautifully display relevant and up to date content online. To encourage event organisers to choose your town, city, region or country for meetings, conferences and exhibitions, you need to showcase your destinations’ touristic capabilities. Events and festivals offer tourism destinations a great way to attract, inspire and engage with visitors and residents. 

The most important about event tourism is building an event ‘beyond time’ to capitalise on tourism to the destination over the long term; building events around community values; ensuring a better fit with the local image; and ensuring that signage and imagery are consistent with the destination’s other efforts to market itself to the same target markets. Local events and festivals are being used as a destination marketing tool and a mechanism to enhance tourism development. The events play an important role in tourism destination management and create physical products and services, which include the infrastructure, facilities, local community festivals, musical attractions, hospitality and transportation. These visitors enhance the destination marketing publicity by creating a tourism economy for the host cities.