Fiona Bakas, Willem J. L. Coetzee and Violet V. Cuffy
Introduction
âThe term events tourism was not widely used prior to 1987â (Getz and Page, 2016b: 597). This introductory chapter offers an overview of the core theoretical framework underpinning events tourism, approaching it both as a professional practice and a field of academic study. Moreover, it was only a few decades ago that âevents tourismâ became established in the tourism industry and research community, with the classification of three main types: business events (e.g. conferences), festivals (e.g. music festivals) and sports (e.g. Olympics). The core proposition defined is one of an instrumental subfield (Getz and Page, 2016b: 597).
Now, âevents tourismâ is recognised as being inclusive of all planned events and of having an integrated approach to development and marketing (Getz, 2008). Getz argues that past research focused on defining the term âevents tourismâ and the economic impact of events in the 1970s; the supply and demand side of events and the destination perspective of events in the 1980s; management of events in the 1990s; and the social and cultural impacts of events in 2000. Currently, much research is separated by event type. The uniqueness of this type of tourism is centred around events being spatial-temporal phenomena which are never the same, with live attendance in person essential in order to experience what is marketed as a âone-offâ experience. An event then, according to Zizek (2014), is an âamphibious notion with more than 50 shades of greyâ. It is something that happens beyond sufficient reason and has the potential to change the perception of reality. Furthermore, the event phenomenon is inherent to humans and society, and thus plays a significant part in structuring and maintaining societies (Pernecky, 2013).
Events tourism has progressively gained attention from tourism academics, especially because it is an industry exhibiting exponential growth since 2008 (Getz and Page, 2016b). They are increasingly becoming more powerful marketing tools and are now central to advancing a destinationâs attractiveness. Gaps in events research have been identified in various areas such as the socio-cultural and environmental impacts of events and the relationship between events and public policy agendas (Mair and Whitford, 2013). To some extent these gaps have been addressed by recent literature that focuses predominantly on theory and policy for planned events (Getz and Page, 2016a), religious tourism and pilgrimage management (Raj and Griffin, 2015) and large-scale sporting events or âmega-eventsâ (Kim et al., 2015). Much events tourism theorisation regarding tourist motivation draws on social psychology to explain why tourists choose to visit the events they do and what that means to them. As much events tourism research has taken an economic impact angle; nevertheless, economic theorisation also plays an important role within events tourism. Nowadays there is a concerted need to examine outcomes and impacts at the personal, political and societal levels, and also in terms of cultural and environmental change (Getz and Page, 2016a). Due to the complexity of events tourism and its effects on society, the journey to establish the theory and practices associated with contextualising events within critical event studies is compared to an âodysseyâ (Spracklen and Lamond, 2016). This book aims to address the above gaps in events tourism literature and theory, presenting new empirical research from a wide geographic scope, critically analysing contemporary issues within events tourism.
Adopting a critical approach is now an imperative for tourism research, with an increasing number of the academic community recognising the essentiality of critiquing existing theories, conceptual frameworks and ways of knowing (Tribe, 2008; Ren, Pritchard and Morgan, 2010; Costa et al., 2017). When planning for means by which events can leverage greater community benefit and hence potentially increase social-cultural sustainability, it should not be assumed that events are uncontested and accepted as positive opportunities (Chalip, 2006). For example, whilst festivals are a source of community pride and an expression of shared values and identity, the accrual of social capital may be uneven thus exacerbating existing inequalities, as shown in a research on two festivals in East London (Stevenson, 2016). Moreover, there is a growing body of literature exploring the potential of events to develop social capital (Pernecky, 2013). Further, social capital can be defined as the features of social life (networks, norms and trust) that enable participants to pursue shared objectives and is the force that binds society together, transforming egocentric individuals into members of a community with shared interests and is linked to co-operation and reciprocity (Ziakas, 2016).
Current critical event studies are searching for a richer understanding of what is understood as an event and exploring how they are historically, culturally and politically produced (Hannam, Mostafanezhad and Rickly, 2016). Moving away from a focus on operationalist concerns, critical event studies are taking cultural, political and social trajectories (Lamond and Platt, 2016). These studies identify an urgent need to go beyond the assumption that event evaluations are fundamentally economic impact assessments and to practice critical reflexivity in the study of events. Significant current research on critical events tourism points to the importance of questioning whether local communities are consulted in event planning that takes place in their city or town. Whilst previously, the enjoyment and participation of the local community were the key drivers of events, now there is criticism that festivals are often imposed on communities such as in the case of Kangaroo Island Surf Music Festival which created opposition from community members who felt they had not been consulted in the event planning stage (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2018). Hence, a key factor necessary for enhancing destination community social capital includes effective local resident engagement in tourism planning (Moscardo et al., 2017). Recent critical approaches to events tourism also focus on the need to explore the power dynamics between a festival and the local community (Dredge and Jamal, 2015), in order to provide a more critical deconstruction of the political and economic structures that shape tourism eventsâ policy and planning.
Adding to the already blossoming area of critical events tourism literature, this book aims to fill a gap in knowledge by furthering the discourse on critical events tourism research and as such is likely to be of interest to events planners and event tourism academics throughout the world. This book seeks to further explore the concept of events tourism with a critical focus, and examine its importance from different economic, technological, industry, policy and socio-economic perspectives that will highlight critical issues, showcase best practice examples, raise managerial and political implications, formulate conceptual frameworks and advance understanding in this important area of tourism research.
Our book structure
The contributing chapters are grouped under four broad categories: (1) fundamental concepts, (2) contemporary perspectives, (3) regeneration, displacement and planning frameworks and (4) the future of events tourism. These reflect a broad range of events tourism outcomes that we propose require critical reflection.
In Part I Fundamental concepts, the editors Fiona Bakas, Willem J. L. Coetzee and Violet V. Cuffy present an overview of events tourism and the core issues on which the book is underpinned in this chapter.
Part II broadly covers the topic of contemporary perspectives. First, David Strafford expands on the concept of Destination Shopping Centres (DSC) as âmini citiesâ increasingly using events to attract âtouristsâ from further afield, encouraging them to arrive earlier, stay longer and leave later. In Chapter 2, according to Strafford, there is a shift from a core offering of simply somewhere to shop towards more of a leisure facility, with events employed as a key part of this marketing strategy. Focus is on events tourism in a contemporary sense, with non-traditional venues, using non-traditional events, to attract non-traditional tourists. As the pressure of the bricks and mortar retail sector grows, the more wide-ranging, entertaining, experiential and engaging the events will become. This chapter highlights the changing shopping centre market, why consumers are demanding all-in-one experiences and how DSC managers are reacting to this demand through an increasingly strategic and creative approach to their event portfolios.
Birgit Muskat and Judith Mair, in Chapter 3, analyse job experiences and they provide insight into managing event staff heterogeneity. Their chapter offers a deeper understanding of events management by adding an organisational behavioural perspective. The insights in this chapter are relevant to event managers, specifically in relation to staff job experiences and job satisfaction management. Here, staff hold a central position in event management; this chapter synthesises the unique organisational aspects of events and theoretically explores how the event workforce, consisting of permanent employees, casual staff and unpaid volunteers, experience job satisfaction. Although this chapter focuses mainly on major events which attract tourists to a destination and which are large enough to have a complement of full-time permanent staff, elements of arguments in this chapter will also have relevance to smaller events, even those entirely organised and staffed by volunteers.
Estela Marine-Roig, Eva Martin-Fuentes and Natalia Daries-RamĂłnâs chapter follows exploring user-generated events (UGEs) in tourism through social media in Chapter 4. They argue that social media have revolutionised travel and tourism, and special attention has been given to tourist user-generated content (UGC) and the formation of online communities; however, little attention has been paid to tourist events entirely generated by users through social media. The aim of this chapter is to define and characterise the phenomenon of tourism UGEs through social media around usersâ new role of empowerment and to highlight their interest in tourism organisations. They provide a quantitative framework approach to store, analyse and compare events in relation to social media, which they complement with qualitative observant participation at the events. A mixed-method approach is applied to the analysis of three Instagram meetups organised by a specific online community at three Pyrenean Ski resorts. Results confirm the UGEsâ great capacity for image dissemination and attraction, and outline the differential characteristics resulting from this new user empowerment.
Chapter 5 âUndocumented! Small events of rural hinterlands, South Africaâ by Unathi Sonwabile Henama provides some insights into events on the margins. He argues that tourism has grown âin leaps and boundsâ since the democratic transition of South Africa in 1994, which heralded the end of apartheid in South Africa. The growth of tourism has been so spectacular that today it is regarded as the new gold, South Africaâs number one export. The growth of tourism has also been associated with the growth of special interest tourism that has seen the emergence of sports tourism, events tourism, religious tourism and health tourism. For instance, South Africa has hosted numerous sporting events such as the 1995 Rugby World Cup and 2010 FIFA World Cup, as well as several cultural festivals. The plethora of academic gaze has been primarily urban with scant attention given to less glamorous rural events. Key is the celebration of Ramadan in Bo Kaap, a religious Muslim orientated event, whose legacy resulted in the declaration of heritage protection for Bo Kaap. Then, Community-Based Tourism at Komjekejeke, an annual celebration of Ndebele culture. Here the legacy involves upgrading of infrastructure and creation of an enabling environment to consume Ndebele culture.
Keeping with the rural theme in Chapter 6, Burcin Kalabay Hatipoglu, Onno Anıl, Saadet MemiĆ and Dilan Ćahin des...
