Strategic Management of Festivals and Events - Essay Example

Strategic Management of Festivals and Events Student’s Name: Institution: Date: Events, meetings and festivals, are a crucial part of life as they offer an opportunity for social and cultural interaction and exchange where people meet, share and exchange ideas, enlighten and encourage one another and share contacts among others. There are also those events and festivals that are of value not only to individuals, but also to the whole community, region and even a nation as a whole. Under this category, there are events such as those that are a part to the industries. A good example is the tourist industry where they are sources of income thus promoting and strengthening the economic growth. As a result of understanding the roles and values of such gatherings, the government and other investors and stakeholders have realized a good business opportunity and other chances in highly investing in this area. Several have done it through sustainable development of facilities, such as the environment, infrastructure, finance access to interested people and even learning institutions, to improve on the same (Edwards & Presbury, 1998). To understand of the context in this writing better, a deep understanding of the words or terms used in the context could be needed. A display or celebration in which the public is invited, less frequently and only for a limited time duration is considered as an event. It could take different forms ranging from entertainment, arts, business and trade fairs, cultural, education and scientific contexts and shows respectively, political, sport extra. Celebration of events takes place during individual’s leisure time. On the other hand, the festival is a public celebration that usually has a specified theme, about the host community or culture, for that season, during which educative, cultural events are displayed. Festivals take place in various grounds including religious places or sites, parades, carnivals or even heritage commemoration grounds (Edwards & Presbury, 1998). Knowing that both festivals and events involve people gathering with a general purpose, either business or leisure, next is to understand their nature and roles. These activities often require coordination and concentration in terms of effort, monitoring, implementation and also evaluation. The gathering could be set or generated by a business group or private sector, at different levels ranging from local, regional, state, national and global (Edwards & Presbury, 1998). A strategic planner thinks up of strategic programs and sells them to decision makers for the implementation. Strategic management is a systematic approach aimed at identifying and making any necessary changes and measurement of organizational performance as it works towards attaining its mission and vision. Three main processes namely, strategic planning which incorporates pre-planning and strategic planning processes, Strategic management involving deployment and implementation of the strategic plan, finally measurement and evaluation of the results are involved in strategic management. Deployment incorporates plan completion and communication to the employees while implementation is all about a plan resourcing, being put into action, and thereafter managing the actions. Measurement consists of tracking the implementation actions while Evaluation involves assessing the changes in the organization that results from the actions then using that information to help update the plans made respectively. Noting that strategic management is not a one-time event but a continuous process, it is only easy or possible to strategically manage those festivals and events that are not one-time (Wells, 2000). Hallmark event is a critical concept within tourism literature event. Hallmark events take a crucial space in events’ destination’s portfolio. They also take extra meaning as permanent institutions within the community. For sustainment of these events, it must deliver and meet residents’ benefits at the same time sustain the shareholders’ support. There is a great value in addressing the “mega” and “iconic” events to eliminate confusion with hallmark events. Hallmark events could be conceptualized through a particular model that clearly specify the three major outcome and key process goals that can be used for planning and evaluation since events are very seasonal. An attempt to understand this the latter, it was found that, recreation, leisure and travel markets have cyclic demands. The above forms a major factor that contributes to supplier of goods, services and investments experiencing low returns due to low productivity. Hallmark event comes as one of the strategic responses to the above cyclic or seasonality problem. These events based upon a key theme put into service help focus recreation and tourism planning on specific periods (Donald, Svensson, Robert & Anders, 2012). Such events have psychological, economic, political, physical, social-cultural impacts among others. The short time recurring events rely on their uniqueness, timely significance and status, to draw attention and create interest from the people. Hence, events can serve as a strategic instrument to solving the seasonality issues. Concerning the above, hallmark tourist events are key cultural, sporting, expositions and fairs events, with international status, which are usually held on regular or periodic basis. Their main focus is providing the hosting community with a chance to fetch high prominence in tourist markets. Therefore, hallmark events play a major role in building the modern tourism industry. Both stampede and Calgary exhibitions are hallmark events. The car race in India napolis is another hallmark event while, in European cities, this event is characterised by traditional cultural events and others going for dances and pop music festivals. A brief list of Major Events Company hallmark events include Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix, Australian Open (tennis, Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show and L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival. Additionally, there is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Melbourne Cup Carnival (horse racing), Australian Rules Football Grand Final and Boxing Day Test (cricket). A periodic hallmark event is that marking important anniversaries in the history, therefore, they are one-time only. They can, therefore, allow a slow build-up of reputation and awareness (Donald, Svensson, Robert & Anders, 2012). Mega event refers to the absolute size measure or a describer of the scale or quality of the event. Mega events are those able to attract a world-wide publicity and be of a “must-see’ nature, thus exceed a million visitors. Since they are equated to large sizes, they are equivalently referred to as Olympics, international sports or even World’s Fairs. The argument also considers even smaller festivals to have mega impacts on small towns when focusing on the number of available tourists, disruptions, value of economic gains or impacts, prestige, coverage by the media extra, for the organisation, host community or venue (Donald, Svensson, Robert & Anders, 2012). Hallmark events are of great influence and importance in the Event-Tourism Portfolio. An event-tourism is both demand-size and supply centre. It focuses in reflecting on the want destinations and the attracted tourist to the event. Thus, the hallmark event has to implement, in overall, the event-tourism goal and at the same time be conceptualized from the tourist experiences perspectives. Therefore, it must satisfy and appeal for more repeat visits thereafter. It also serves to achieve on the event’s image for potential tourists. In an event-tourism portfolio, a permanent and prominent position is held by hallmark event as mega-events, which are occasional, at the pyramid apex with the foundation as the regional and local events. It is preferred to host multiple hallmark events so as to overcome demand seasonality and attract market niches. However, in so doing, the organizing team meets several barriers. Of all the obstacles, resource is the biggest of all. The community or organizing party puts effort to host big, multiple events and invests heavily in promoting the destined marketing organization. Sometimes it would require investing majorly in acquiring venues for hosting multiple events. Also planning for different types of events is more expensive because they have different resource requirements. There is also a research investment to understand the interests of individual communities, their social worlds, their different categories of hobbies, sport or even lifestyles and many others (Donald, Svensson, Robert &Anders, 2012). Events and Festivals: outcome and process goals. Organizers need to pay key attention to success factors of goal and planning processes, during planning and production of the events. Paying attention to attraction measures helps outdo the competitors, thus drawing a large number of people. When the drawing power is high, more people are likely to travel, despite the large distances, not to miss the attraction. Prior to events, demand is only estimated by comparing similar events and their market –penetration ability. Primary attractions could be those that are majorly associated with reputation, that has to be fostered for quite a long time (Donald, Svensson, Robert & Anders, 2012). Marketers could build a reputation through various ways. Some do it by delivering satisfactory services and experiences hence co-branding (Boo & Busser, 2006). Also by establishing the event hierarchy to meet particular client needs and comparing them with other markets and over time. Understanding expressed and hidden customer needs is another success factor to put into place. To create a positive image to the community/destination, a coordinated and active brand management is necessary at each and every event level. It is required that the destination and event image, among all stakeholders, should be periodically tested. Here, media staff management and the media role is of great significance where good and strong media partners are cultivated. The attention of the global media helps in advertisement, publicity and curiosity creation. Media plays a key role in marketing (Donald, Svensson, Robert & Anders, 2012). In generating and managing media coverage, permanent events stand a more opportunity than periodic or one-time events. This result to potential for image enhancement. Co-branding is another mechanism to be applied, where two or more partners associate their brands, thus associating one brand with another that has an established good image enhances the image of the others. Considerations are made on how a particular community wants to be perceived when branding (Donald, Svensson, Robert & Anders, 2012). Most hallmark event’s aim is to become traditional. For this case, the event should foster attachment of the area and have full dependency on its community fundraisers, volunteers, ticket sales and in reciprocating to the community within which it operates. The events should strive to providing greater and different community benefits and be at the look-out to being responsible and solving any arising problems or negative impacts. While hosting multiple events, the organizing team should consider the creation of sustainable local jobs. The event should focus on regional urbanisation or development, infrastructure and leisure facility improvement within the host community. The host community residents mostly tend to perceive positive impacts and develop a positive attitude towards an event if they can see the benefits of that event or gain personally or individually from it. Failure to meet the above, the host community, is most likely tho shift over time (Donald, Svensson, Robert & Anders, 2012). It is important to consider managing a full marketing mix and maintaining close and permanent relationships with the hospitality and tourism sectors. The achieve this requires having strong and unique brands that reflect the community identity and values. Most hallmark events are non-profit making thus integrating an extent of public control and ownership for the continued support by the politicians and other stakeholders. These favour the process of involving key stakeholders, securing resources, full transparency and accountability. It must demonstrate green operations, be responsible and financially sustainable. These events must not be immune to changing environmental forces thus being adaptable and inevitable (Donald, Svensson, Robert & Anders, 2012). There has been an increment in use of mega-event as a strategic spatial planning tool. The argument is based to a case study of Barcelona where the latter has been considered and used as a tool of urban governance and development in general, bearing in mind that mega events are high profile international events that are short-term. Host cities of such events must accommodate a large urban programme as providing sports facilities, hotel accommodations, media parks and other supporting facilities. The result is a large project scale with very high economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts to the entire regions. Many regions noted the above and have started making great efforts on such projects (Spaans & Qu, 2009). In conclusion, hallmark events are recognizable and of global importance within the communities and the tourism industry, therefore, requires strict scrutiny. Hallmark events, as the first principle, have a crucial within their host communities as an institution and in the event-tourism portfolios. These events have been conceptualized in functionality terms, image branding, attraction and community, as the three outcome goals. The second principle being the long period achievement of performance and institutional status. The main difference between mega and hallmark events is that hallmark events are larger while most mega events are periodic or one-time only. The result and essential process goals (marketing, image branding and organisation and ownership), from the hallmark event model gives rise to the process of planning, implementation and evaluation for both tourism and community-based event planning. This model finds application as an evaluation tool for both destination event portfolios and existing events. Planners of event-tourism and event organizers can, therefore, investigate each of the methods for each outcome, mentioned earlier, for better strategic management of their respective events, for the better of the tourist industry (Donald, Svensson, Robert & Anders, 2012). Therefore, the strategic management of festivals and events main purpose should be to improve the management of the event for the reduction of adverse environmental impacts and better management of the effects on that specific community. Secondly, the development of affordable and safe cultural entertainment opportunities and events that involve people all ages, interests and to provide licensed venues with alternatives. Works Cited Anders, G., Donald, G., Svensson, B. & Robert, P. (2012) Hallmark events: Definition, goals and planning processes. International Journal of Event Management, 47-64. Boo, S. & Busser, J. (2006) Impact analysis of a tourism festival on tourists’ destination Images Event Management, 9(4), 223-237. Edwards, D. & Presbury, R. (1998). Sustainable Festivals, Meetings and Event. The University of Western Sydney. 7-9. Spaans, M. & Qu, L. ( 2009). The Mega Event: A Strategy in Spatial Planning Starting from the Olympic city of Barcelona. The Olympic city of Barcelona: The Delft University of Technology. 1291. Wells, D. L. (2000). Strategic Management. Arlington, Virginia.3-6. Read More