The Phenomenon of Hallmark Events and Mega-Events - Essay Example

Events Tourism Name Institution Course Lecturer Date Today, events have become more central to our culture since they have increased leisure time and discretionary spending. There has been a proliferation of public events, entertainment, and series of celebrations supported by the government in an effort of harnessing economic development, nation-building and destination marketing. Events have been the essential elements of corporations and businesses in terms of promoting their marketing strategies and image promotion. In every subject and theme, community groups and individuals have given rise to a marvelous array of events (Dredge & Whitford 2011, p. 493). In this paper, we shall study the phenomenon of events and more particularly Hallmark events and Mega-events. It is worth considering their characteristics and their role in encouraging tourism. As events emerge as an industry, it’s vital to understand the phenomenon event. In a nutshell, an event is an organized occasion such as a convention, meeting, exhibition, special event, gala dinner, etc. Most notably, it is unique and often composed of several different yet related functions. On that note, therefore, we now look at Mega-events and Hallmark events (Getz 1997, p. 213). Fourie, & Santana (2011, p. 1366) asserts that, Mega –events are so large expressly targeted at the international tourism market described as “mega” due to their size, attendance, target market, political effects, and level of public financial involvement, extent of television coverage, facilities, and impact on economic and social fabric of the host community. Mega events include World Fairs and Expositions, World Soccer Finals, Olympic games, etc. On the other hand, Hallmark events refer to those major events one-time or recurring events of limited duration, aimed at enhancing awareness, appeal and profitability of a tourism destination in the short and long term. To attract attention, such events rely on their success on uniqueness or timely significance (Getz, Svensson, Peterssen, & Gunnervall 2012, p. 41). They are typically one-off occurrences, or they move locations, for example, the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Carnival in Rio, the Kentucky Derby in the USA, the Chelsea Flower Show in the UK, etc. Going in-depth into the phenomenon of event tourism without first describing what tourism is will not be a good thing. There are many definitions of tourism but the simple and most accepted definition is ‘‘the temporary movement of people to destinations outside their usual places of work or residence, the activities undertaken during their stay in those destinations, and the facilities created to cater to their needs’’. Therefore, event tourism is a systematic planning, development, and marketing of festivals and special events as tourist attractions, catalysts for infrastructures, image-makers, and economic growth. In other words, the aims of event tourism are to exploit the capabilities of events fully in efforts of achieving tourism development of host communities (Getz 1997, p. 212). Event-tourism comprises of both supply and demand-side that reflects on attraction, image creation, animation, catalyst and the tourists who are attracted to the events. In this regard, hallmark event serves in implementing the overall tourism goals, and they are conceptualized from the perspective of tourist’s experiences (Gratton, & Shibli 2000, p. 20). An event-tourism portfolio, hallmark event holds a prominent and permanent position, with occasional mega-events at the apex of a pyramid, and local events as the foundation. Hallmark events are expected to display power in attracting tourists (preferably international), create a positive image and economic benefits, and be sustainable in the broadest sense in the world (Mair & Jago 2010, p. 81). Sports mega events offer the host nation an opportunity to showcase its cultural dynamism, political will, economic capability and tourism brand. This notion emanates from the fact that mega-events attract a lot of media attention hence becoming a vital feature of the events. The host nation aims at attracting tourists and investors through media by showcasing their diverse culture, technical and managerial sophistication, modernity and quality of life. The 2002 FIFA World Cup that took place in Japan and South Korea offered more than 41,000 hours of programming in 2013 countries with an estimated cumulative audience of 28.8 billion viewers (Mair & Jago 2010, p. 78). A primary goal of hallmark events is the ability to provide multiple benefits to residents. To begin with are the economic gains associated with building the tourism industry and minimizing the negative effects of seasonality of demand (Gratton, & Shibli 2000, p. 18). Additionally, the event is expected to become a tradition, in term of attendance and permanent institution in the community. In this regard, hallmark event will both foster place attachment and be fully dependent on its community- not just for selling tickets but also for volunteers and fundraisers. Thus, it is inconceivable that a hallmark event would be relocated to another destination when its reason for being is based on its links to a single destination or community (Fourie & Santana 2011, p. 1360). Apart from creating opportunities for construction of new sports stadiums, mega sports events offer an opportunity of improving the environment to the city as well. This is because the tourists, participants and officials that are associated with the events requires new infrastructure such as roads, sports stadiums, and an efficient transport network. Additionally, there is a need for other infrastructure that is not directly related to the event, e.g. hotels, open spaces, and commercial centers. Mega-events are viewed as a catalyst for long-term projects that would have taken a long time to come to reality. Due to this improvement, tourism is encouraged in the region (Getz et al. 2012, p. 65). Another social-economic is job creation. Talking of job opportunities, the latter primarily stresses the need for skilled labor and mostly in the tourism sector. Undoubtedly, a mega sporting event generates large number of jobs due to the increased number of spectators/tourists such as in the case of Olympic Games. The quality of these jobs is what enhances the tourism industries in years to come. Tourist increase is experienced after that since the growly memory of these events never; they keep on coming time after time. Therefore, such events play a significant role in supporting the tourism sector in the future (Gratton, & Shibli 2000, p. 19). In any given event, media is a vital thing in terms of creating awareness of the host city or region. It is believed that, once media is present in these big events, the host will never be the same again as far as the tourism industry is concerned. Apart from respect and recognition, the country’s tourist image is enhanced. Both the tourist present in the event and the ones watching the events from their other countries admire visiting these hosts’ countries. Research shows that, televised England tour to the West Indies increased package tourism to those islands as much as 60%. There is always a dramatic change after any televised event, and, as a result, tourism is encouraged dramatically (Fourie & Santana 2011, p. 1362). Gratton (2000 p. 25) observes that, events also encourage tourism through social-cultural benefits for the host region. It can be urged that, events strengthens regional traditions and values and increases local pride and community spirit. As World Cup came to Africa for the first time, millions of people celebrated as they saw it as a regeneration of a continent. Such spirit on sporting and cultural always gives a rise to national pride and promise to show the country at its best. In this regard, people will always look up to another super sporting event for them to take part and as a result tourism is encouraged. Allen, O'Toole, Harris & McDonnell (2010, p. 48) asserts that, Mega-events also transform the host cities. The city of Sheffield was traditionally a manufacturing city but after the industry recession of the 1980’s, the city adopted leisure and tourism. Under that approach, hosting a mega event was seen as the integral part of the strategy. After the city had invested £139 million in infrastructure, the city was given a new focus and in 1995 Sheffield was named by the Sports Council as the UK’s first ‘National City of Sport’. This was in recognition of its ongoing contribution and commitment to the sport. Through these transformations, tourism becomes the backbone and rises to another level (Fourie & Santana 2011, p. 1358). Hallmark events and mega events call for suitable infrastructures for the events that follow. In addition, infrastructures development that is not directly related directly to the event also takes place, such as tourist’s facilities, commercial centers, and open spaces (Jago, Dwyer, Lipman, Lill & Vorster 2010, p. 234). These developments aim at improving the physical appearance of the host city or region. The 2000 Sydney Games saw organizers spending $1.15 billion on the construction of sporting facilities. In addition, the latter included spending $137 million in rehabilitating polluted sites in Homebush Bay, which become the sporting center during the games. The impact of these improvements is an advancement of the tourist industry in any given region (Mair & Jago 2010, p. 91). In managing events, government policies have also played an important role in promoting the tourism sector. Policies have been taken into account before hosting any event as different events have different policies governing them (Goldblatt 2010, p. 9). For instance, there those events where there has to be a public disturbance, environment pollution, erection, and staging, etc. Since politicians have learned the how to raise revenue through events, they will make sure that these events gain media coverage, attract visitors and increase economic benefits and job opportunities. Therefore, they have become active in bidding for, hosting and staging major events. Thus, tourism has grown due to some of these reasons (Fourie & Santana 2011, p. 1368). According to Getz et al. (2012, p. 53), massive attendance to these events gives the tourist industry a chance to offer both leisure and tourists attractions. More often, there is an increasing demand for catering services, hotels, museums and other attractive places for tourists. Additionally, there is also a creation of opportunities beyond the immediate tourism sector such as in the food processing. All this shows how much tourism has been encouraged through the existence of different events (Getz et al. 2012, p. 40). Major events have for a long time acted as a catalyst for attracting image-makers and tourists, providing a competition platform, positioning market destinations, and creating destinations profiles (Jennings & Lodge 2011, p. 198). The main aim of any event is to create a positive destination image, increase the tourist destination, increase revenue, expand traditional tourist season and draw international and national visitors. In a nutshell, this explains how events have to a larger extent supported the tourism industry in notable ways (Gratton, & Shibli 2000, p. 24). In conclusion, this paper explains that event tourism is a sector equipped with all potentials that can develop any tourism destination, or host community/city. This paper has also shown how events can promote tourism through its impact on the host community that is social-culturally, environmentally, economically and politically. It has been found that, events are expensive to host but their benefits overshadow the negative aspect, and they are a good strategy to catalyze urban development. In this regard, these developments can only be kept alive if the government finds ways of getting people to use them and make them affordable. 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