EXPLORING EVENT TOURISM STRATEGIES - A CASE STUDY OF FOUR NORDIC TOURISM ORGANISATIONS

Abstract

As tourism is one of the fastest growing industries today, thus within the tourism industry events are getting more and more important. People have become more interested in events of all kinds, and will travel far away to participate in events that they find interesting. Events can offer various economical and social benefits for destinations, and therefore destination managers can and should employ events effectively in a tourism role. It has become widely accepted that every community and destination needs to adopt a long-term, strategic approach to event tourism thereby planning and development in order to realise the full tourism potential of events. This study was launched as a response to the lack of studies on how event tourism strategies are actually used in destinations. The study was directed to four Nordic tourism organisations, and the aim was to explore how these organisations work strategically with events. The main findings of the study indicate that although tourism organisations have increasingly realised the potential and importance of events, the extent to which events are used strategically in tourism organisations varies. Some tourism organisations have integrated events deep into their overall tourism strategies, and events form their own business area and have their own business strategy. In other cases events are included in the overall tourism strategies, however, the work with events is rather haphazard and other business areas are prioritised. At the end of the study a model that describes how event tourism strategy development in tourism organisations can be seen to follow certain stages is developed. In relation to the model, the study suggests that the stage to which tourism organisations have come in relation to strategic event tourism management depends on factors such as the ownership structure and resource base of tourism organisations, city involvement in relation to events, and the capacity and events infrastructure of destinations.