3.1. The destination perspective on event tourism
From the tourism industry's perspective, typically through the eyes of a DMO or event development agency, events are highly valued as attractions, catalysts, animators, place marketers, and image-makers. The specific role of a DMO is generally to promote tourism to a destination, both business and leisure travel. Conventions are considered business travel and participation sport events or festivals are part of leisure travel. In a study of Canadian visitor and convention bureaus (Getz, Anderson, & Sheehan, 1998), events were revealed to be one of the few areas of product development engaged in by DMOs; typically their membership (often dominated by commercial accommodation operators and attractions) want visitor demand all year round.
Existing events might be viewed as resources to exploit, which can be problematic from a social and cultural perspective. Taking a comprehensive portfolio approach leads to greater emphasis on creating new events and attracting them through competitive bidding. The portfolio approach (see Fig. 4) is similar to how a company strategically evaluates and develops its line of products and services. It is goal-driven, and value-based. Destinations must decide what they want from events (the benefits), and how they will measure their value. In this destination context economic values have always prevailed, and this preoccupation might very well constitute a limitation on the sustainability of events. Stakeholders, encompassing the organizations that produce events, the community at large, and the beneficiaries of event tourism in the service sector, are likely to stress different aims and concerns.
The portfolio approach to event tourism strategy-making and evaluation (Source: ...
Fig. 4.
The portfolio approach to event tourism strategy-making and evaluation (Source: Getz, 2005).
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Within the jargon of event tourism, and figuring prominently in the illustrated portfolio model, two terms stand out. ‘Mega events’ have long been defined and analyzed in terms of their tourist attractiveness and related image-making or developmental roles. Indeed, this was the subject of an AIEST conference in 1987. The perceived successes of mega events, including the Brisbane World's Fair and America's Cup Defense in Perth, Australia, definitely spurred creation of event development agencies, research, and event management programs of study in that country, helping position Australia as a world leader. A similar consequence of staging major events has been observed in other countries as well, including New Zealand (Gnoth & Anwar, 2000).
The other notable term is ‘hallmark event’ which has various meanings. Ritchie (1984, p. 2) published the first general discussion of their impacts and referred to them as “Major one-time or recurring events of limited duration, developed primarily to enhance the awareness, appeal and profitability of a tourism destination…”. Getz (2005, p. 16) used the term in a manner more specifically tied to image-making, place marketing and destination branding: “…‘hallmark’ describes an event that possesses such significance, in terms of tradition, attractiveness, quality, or publicity, that the event provides the host venue, community, or destination with a competitive advantage. Over time, the event and destination can become inextricably linked, such as Mardi Gras and New Orleans.”
‘Local’ and ‘regional’ events, occupying the base levels of the portfolio pyramid, are problematic from a tourism perspective. Some of them have tourism potential that can be developed, requiring investment, and some are not interested in tourism—perhaps even feeling threatened by it. If local events are primarily community or culturally oriented there is a good argument to be made for not exploiting them. Certainly the issue of preserving cultural authenticity and local control emerges whenever tourism goals are attached to local and regional events.
When contemplating generic event development strategies, some destinations appear to over-emphasize mega events to the detriment of a more balanced portfolio, while others pursue the promotion of one or more events as destination hallmarks to signify both quality and other brand values. A related strategy is to deliberately seek to elevate existing events into those with hallmark status, a process that can be said to ‘institutionalize’ events. A more recent trend is for DMOs and event development agencies to create and produce their own major events as part of a sophisticated branding strategy.
Note that the typology of events in the portfolio model is based on functionality, that is the degree to which certain economic, tourism or political goals can be met through hosting and marketing events. As such it represents a discourse dominated by specific developmental and political assumptions that might run counter to an events strategy based on fostering community development, culture, sport, leisure, health or other aims.
Furthermore, it is also possible to classify events on the basis of their place attachment, being the degree to which they are associated with, or institutionalized in a particular community or destination. Mega events are typically global in their orientation and require a competitive bid to ‘win’ them as a one-time event for a particular place. By contrast, ‘hallmark events’ cannot exist independently of their host community, and ‘local’ or ‘regional’ events are by definition rooted in one place and appeal mostly to residents.
The event development agencies that exist in every state in Australia seem to represent the state of the art in event tourism. For example, EventsCorp Western Australia and Queensland Events Corp, have strategies, policies and programs for attracting, bidding, developing and assisting events primarily to foster tourism. Getz (1997) and Getz (2005) profiled the Queensland agency, while Getz and Fairley (2004) examined media management issues surrounding the state agency's two major ‘owned’ events in Gold Coast.
As an example of Event Tourism developed for strategic purposes, note the mission of The Canadian Sport Tourism Alliance which seeks to “…increase Canadian capacity and competitiveness to attract and host sport events” (www.canadiansporttourism.com). While there are social and sport-specific reasons for hosting these events, the tourism driver is obviously paramount because most Canadian sport tourism agencies or personnel are located within city DMOs.
A substantial part of the Event Tourism business of DMOs and event development agencies is bidding on events that have owners. This process has been described as a special-purpose marketplace by Getz (2004b) who studied the event bidding goals, methods and attributed success factors of Canadian DMOs. Bidding has also been studied by Emery (2001), Persson (2002), and Westerbeek, Turner, and Ingerson (2002).
Gnoth and Anwar (2000) examined New Zealand's Event Tourism initiatives and offered a framework for developing an effective strategy. Although it is obvious that resources have to be committed, perhaps a more important issue was determining how to measure the country's return on investment and to coordinate the various stakeholders necessary to become competitive. Getz (2003) provided specific advice on planning and developing sport event tourism, including a case study from Seminole County, Florida, to illustrate supply, demand and process issues. The book Sport Tourism Destinations (Higham, 2005) is an excellent source of practical planning and marketing advice.
To be most effective, the DMO or event agency has to establish relationships with the event sector and individual events, hence a network approach is useful. Whitford (2004a) and Whitford (2004b) research in Australia documented the development of event tourism policies and programs, particularly as a tool in regional development. In one region she found the policies did not give much recognition to the roles of events in fostering regional growth, but they were largely socio-cultural in nature. This revealed a gap between local authority policies and those of states and the nation that aggressively pursued event tourism for its economic benefits.
Stokes (2004) studied the Australian event development agencies from the perspective of stakeholder networks, collaboration, and strategy making, and specifically looked at the relevance of the concept of knowledge networks. Her analysis revealed the dominance of a corporate orientation in which event-related strategy and decisions were made at the state level. A ‘soft’ or informal network of stakeholders existed, dominated by a core of influential governmental agencies which varied depending on whether the agency was engaged in event bidding, development or marketing. This approach contrasted with the community orientation found at the regional-authority level, where more formal networking occurred between public agencies and private organizations for the purpose of actually producing events.
3.2. An event-centric perspective on event tourism
Many planned events are produced with little or no thought given to their tourism appeal or potential. Sometimes this is due to the organizers’ specific aims, and sometimes there is simply no relationship established between events and tourism. In Calgary, case study research (Getz, Andersson, & Larson, 2007) found that seven festivals were basically ignored by the DMO that had limited or no interest in their tourism potential. This situation had evidently arisen because of the absence of both a tourism plan and a comprehensive events policy. As well, it appeared that the long-standing promotion of one hallmark event, the annual Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, results in small festivals being perceived as insignificant, overshadowed in the media, and somewhat deprived of sponsorship—according to the