Event Evaluation: Impacts and Legacy

Abstract

In the last decades, Festival and Events have gained a major role in societies and such newly found role has triggered the need for a deeper understanding of their role and potential. Events have gained attractiveness due to a series of factors, such as the growth of leisure time, the move towards an economy based on the consumption of experience and shared socialisation needs. Such factors, which are now only mentioned will be further analysed in this paper.

Even though festivals and events have probably arisen for non-touristic reasons, such as religious holidays, cultural celebrations, competitions, the trend to exploit them as touristic assets is quite evident amongst all societies (Getz, 1989). As introduced above, events have gained an incredible popularity and have become tremendous assets, for public and private stakeholders, for their touristic and economic potential. The traditional role of events has been that of adding attractiveness to destinations, they were tools to counter the risk of losing competitiveness when many destinations started investing on the tourism sector. However, this is not the only reason why nowadays events are regarded as important economic tools: governments have realised that, due to their potential resonance, events are useful to display destinations, their quality of service and their ability to carry out and bring to completion important projects (Dimanche, 2008).

Events take up all forms and carry out many functions. Although no strict classification is possible, events are often classified according to their size and the form they take up. Mega-Events, Hallmark Events, Major Events, and Local Events are some of the most recurring terms in literature, when classification is made according to their size. Events such as the Olympics or World fairs tend to fall within the category of Mega-Events; iconic Hallmark Events could be the Oktoberfest in Munich, or Rio Carnival; Major Events could be the F1 Grand Prix or the Cricket World Cup; whereas Local Events are usually smaller community-based events. As mentioned above events can be classified according to their forms as well: some of the most recurring labels are those of cultural events, political events, business events, sport events, arts&entertainment events, private events.

Events are undoubtedly complex phenomena, they are produced using resources from the environment, and they have a degree of impact upon it (Getz, Andersson, Larson, 2007). The environment is populated by numerous actors, which are impacted by the events and have a certain degree of interest towards them. The dissertation will highlight the importance of Event Evaluation as a critical phase in the event management process, on which could depend the success of an event in terms of satisfaction of all stakeholders. In recent years, event evaluation has found increasingly support and evidence in the literature, but it still seems to find little practical application. Even in those cases where event evaluation is monitored and carried out, it is often limited to economic impacts, whilst very little attention is given to social and environmental dimensions. The dissertation will stress the importance of a triple bottom line approach (which focuses on economic, social and environmental impact dimensions) when addressing event evaluation, to maximise positive impacts, minimise negative impacts and to ensure the longevity of events.