Tourism is the world’s fastest growing industry which made festivals evolving continuously thus they are often studied in many sciences. They play a… [604534]

Festival Tourism

Tourism is the world’s fastest growing industry which made festivals evolving continuously thus they
are often studied in many sciences. They play a noteworthy part in the development of tourism; in this
manner it is mandatory to lead a comprehensive study of festivals within the structure of event tourism
and tourism geography. Traveling especially for a festival might be dealt with a different type of tourism
called festival tourism.
Tourism industry itself is perceived as a mix betwe en the public and private sectors which act like a
whole and makes available their resources, knowledge and skills (Dredge, 2006). Morrison (2013) stated
about destination partnership that is “a synergistic relationship between a DMO and other organisation s
or individuals within or outside a destination” (Morrison, 2013: p. 191)
As Gibson & Connell attested in 2007, music tourism has shown a significant growth over the years ,
their study also showed that in the US, festival tourism has reached over 17 per cent over the whole
tourism industry . In the UK, it generates about £2 billion as revenue, providing about 20.000 full time
jobs. The industry is expected to rise by 42% by 2020. Festival tourism includes not only the performers
such as live bands or DJs, but it includes workers from food and beverage area to entertainment and
security areas.
Performing arts and other festivals are a worldwide tourist phenomenon (Chacko and Schaffer 1993;
Getz 1991; Grant and Paliwoda 1998; Rolfe 1992). There are many fact ors that involves into a festivals
such as the supply factors which can be cultural planning and tourism development and demand factors
as leisure, lifestyle sampling or socialization needs, but it can be the desire for unique experiences as
well. When re ferring to “festival tourism”, we imply the activity of travelling outside the place of
resident in another city, region and even country in order to participate in a festival.
Music festivals are a main component of the music tourism industry (Haslam , 2009) and they are present
in our lives for some hundreds of years.
Festivals are celebrations of something the local communities wishes to share and which includes the
general p ublic as members in the experience. Festivals must have as a prime goal a high amount of
people present , which must be an unique experience and should be distinctive in relation to daily
activities .
Falassi (1987) keeps up that the social capacity of a festival is firmly identified with values that a group
views as fundamental to its ideology , for example, social personality, chronicled progression, and
physical survival. Moreover, according to Arcodia and Robb (2000), a festival rotates around the
stamping of exceptional events and the celebration of important occasions. Moreover , festivals are

festivities of something a specific community wishes to share and which includes general public as
members in the experience.
As many important historic figures attests, music festivals have their origins back in 4500 BC from
religious ceremonies or political fests including music and dancing from Ancient Egypt (Mintel, 2013).
First ever music festival was hosted by the ancient Greeks and was known as the Pythian Games and
was held six centuries BC, as wel l as they held different contests regarding music and poetry. Speaking
about modern society, the Monterey Pop Festival was held from 16 to 18 June 1967 , with over 50.000
participants and was one of the events which left a footprint in the music festival i ndustry (Campbell,
2011) .
Regarding the marketing aspect of festivals, there are few researches about it, but Rivero (2009) found
that the majority of the music festivals from Spain adopted other strategy than most of the festivals, they
are trying to bu ild the audience on positive word of mouth, rather than promoting the specific festival
from a touristic point of view. Since the majority of the participants of the music festivals are young
adults, the most relying source of promoting remains the social media because of the high amount of
information such as the line -up and the schedule which can be shared to large public through the social
media platforms (Mintel, 2013). Regarding the Bonaroo festival a study by Hudson and Hudson (2013),
identified tha t the festival used geo -location technology to reward fans with unique experience. The
study has shown that a positive experience combined with the involvement of social media platforms
could help the artists that performed at a specific festival to streng then their relationship with their fans
(Mintel, 2013).

Social influence, as Park (2007) relates, matches the positive or negative changes in social and cultural
conditions which results from an activity, venture or the program facilitated by a group. On a positive
note, festivals can produce an increase in incomes and provide jobs for the local community. (Dwyer et
al., 2000), also festivals are b ringing life to a specific city.

Festivals are an example of relaxation and are used by people to achieve a diversity of specific social
differences (McNay, 2010). A resolution to design a festival is in this way not only based on
participation at the event, as well as a method for the person to fortify their individual self -image,
socialize with others and flag faithfulness to a specific social gathering (Grappi & Montinari, 2011) .

Communication stimulant through personality characterizing messages, that is sent from the event
planner to customer which absolutely broadcasts the desired identity (Bhattacharjee, Berger & Menon,
2014); related myths concerning preconsumption wish, delusion, foresight and readiness are animated
(Lugosi, 2014). Giving personality meaning, myths urge people to combine around an aggregate center
of comparable qualities causing an in -gathering to form (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Embracing these
qualities bears the individual participation into the in -group (Wenger, 1998), and the more notable and
unmistakable in -attributes and out -attributes turn into, the more a man draws in as a componen t of the
gathering (Stryker and Burke, 2000) and takes place in group -related activities (Grappi & Montinari,
2011).

Social function of a festival is heavily connected to values such as social identity and historical
continuity (Falassi, 1987). While ta lking about social identity, there are two categories: interpersonal
identity and collective identity. In order to recognize those two levels based on recurrence of contact and
level of intimacy inside the group, while the relational characters are high, g roup identities have a
tendency to be more depersonalized as Jaeger and Mykletun (2013) attested using a festival point of

view. Usually groups are organized in a hierarchical order against other groups; this classification is
based on standards. (Barnhard & Penaloza, 2013). When at an event many different groups are attending
helps advancing and strengthens the bond within groups while dissing towards other groups (Bhaba,
1996) .

The capacity to refine emblematic information is essential when entering ano ther physicl of mental
setting. Helped by structure, the new societal setting gives the reflective criticism mandatory to confirm
progress toward a perfect portrayal of identity making people to better understand their significance of
self (Reed et al., 20 12). Building relevant instability into the meaning of the model makes the level of
apparent portrayal not only a component of characteristics ( Jenkins, 2008), but rather it constructs with
respect to the social context in which the properties are characterized. Therefore, the individual turns out
to be better prepared to establish from a collection of identities, a personality that is situational ly
prepared . In order to comprehend identity related with the festival, it is important to first see how
customers see symbolic stimuli and general prompts related with the prototypical festival culture and
way of life.

Customer’s loyalty is essential to the festival and event industry sector. Past investigations have
affirmed that participant’s acceptable experience predicts their dedicated attitude and behavior, for
example the spread of positive critique and rehash ap pearance (Cole and Illum, 2006). Regarding the
script theory, the script is an information structure which is put away in the memory and this content
which has been stored is utilized to coordinate behavior when activated (bozinoff and Roth, 1983;
Delamere and Hinch, 1994). Without understanding the cognitive procedure connecting the message
information and reaction yield, discussions of the connection between past experience and faithful state
of mind and behavior can be tendentious (Cole and Illum, 2006).

One of the main strong points regarding any kind of festival is their capability to offer a particular
environment and experience regarding the participants (Richards 7 Wilson, 2006). The involvement in
this kind of environment makes the person -environm ent relationship possible to establish. Moreover,
this relationship creates a situation, history, tradition and reputation sustained by brand, originality,
responsibility and sustainability (Aitken & Campelo, 2011). In order to understand more this fact, w e
should analyze different theoretical approaches, such as sense of place, place bonding and place
attachment. Place bonding or place identity it is used often to show the relationship of the individual
with the specific place and this will be the first st ep of exploring environmental behavior.

Place attachment assigns the emotional relationship that people shape with particular location (Kyle et
al, 2005). This kind of relationship combines locations with emotional meaning and individuals
experiences (Jo hnstone, 2012) and it is more likely to preserve these close bonds to specific places
(Kleine & Menzel -Baker, 2004). These connections are stronger as more time passes while the
individual is spending time in the specific place (Lewicka, 2011). Establishin g a strong connection with
a location it is useful for both individual and group characteristics and is related to place characteristics
and activities, customer loyalty, willingness to revisit the destination and the total satisfaction (Gross &
Brown, 200 8).

The consumers play a significant role while determine the image of a tourist destination. The anticipated
image that the tourists have regarding a specific place have a critical impact in the overall selection of
the location as a touristic destinatio n. The image that is generated by the travelers is the main factor of

the final choice of behavioral intention (Chen and Tsai, 2007). As Lawson and Baud Bovy (1977) stated,
the destination image is the transposition of the impressions, preconceptions and f eelings a person or a
group had about a specific location. Furthermore, Valls (1992) defined the image from the customer’s
perspective as a whole of perceptions. The worst part of the image is the subjectivity of it because is
based on everyone’s perceptio ns about the destination whether or not they visited or they heard about
the destination (San Martin and Rodriguez, 2008). The image of the destination is a combination of
cognitive and affective elements (Mazursky and Jacoby, 1986) and the real experience of visiting the
place is distorted by a psychological and sentimental perspective (Beerli and Martin, 2004).