A Trend of Festival-Style Events within Hospitality Industry - Term Paper Example

Festival-style Event Management Affiliation Festival style event management Introduction In the wake of increased stylish approaches to events management, there has been a growing interest among event managers towards a festival-style approach. In this approach, the central purpose of the event is intelligently mixed with an array of festive activities. The ultimate goal is to put the audience in a fascinating mood while allowing the event run appropriately. Looking at the trends, it identifies the professional rush from traditional formal events to the growing interest on style, excitement and captivating events. Today, the events managers find themselves in a struggle to create an event without being rendered obsolete. Reasons for Festival-style Events Church (2013) states that any people have embraced events refreshing in order to continue appealing to the audience and adapt to the emerging festival-style events. There are four main reasons for this move, firstly, there is a shift of events from infotainment and edutainment to "idea-tainment". Its implication to the event management is overt, there should be a move from boring conference speech to the multiplicity of activities. Moreover, creation of crowd sourced ideas is instrumental in enriching events. Secondly, there is a shift from events monologue to dialogue, meaning the audience involvement is the pillar of successful events. With the need for a dialogue approach to the event succeeds, majority of hospitality-skilled event managers have opted for festival-style events (Drake 2013). Thirdly, there is a growing phenomenon in event designs that encourages the use of user-generated ideas. A new generation of people has digital access to polylogues and, as a result, the new ideas are no longer discussed top-down but rather at horizontal platform (Kim et al,. 2013). With innovative and informed audience, the place of the monologue lecture has no place. Festival-style events allow freestyle sharing of entertainment and important event activities. Lastly, there is a lot of information that can be shared in any event, and the traditional lecture approach would not allow for maximum sharing of information. With festival-style events, it allows small buzz groups that are nested within the event entertainment spree. The opportunity provided by this new strategy allows for maximum interaction during and after event. In addition, it keeps the formal event sandwiched within the long list of agenda thus allowing for change from the formal to a free-style event. Festival-style in Event Management Mair & Whitfold (2013) states that event management does not belong to the faint hearted; it requires resilience and uttermost creativity. In recognition of this critical element, there has been a paradigm shift in hospitality events management approach from formal to festive-based. Festival-based event refers to a conglomeration of fun-making activities that are interlaced within events main activities. Unlike the previous approaches that used hired bands, lists of speakers and well-distributed flyers, the round has greatly shifted towards self-exciting audience. The fundamental basis of this is to create an event that every participant feels excited and participate joyfully (Shone & Parry 2013). Festival-style event strategy has offered this rare opportunity. Moreover, there is a shift from the traditional band-based events to the creation of festivities that ensures that the event do not only achieve its goal, but also create an opportunity to identify talent (Wahab et al., 2014). In addition, the new trend allows the clients have a wide spectrum of aesthetic value. It allows a more colorful event and breaks the traditional lecture-like events. With increased level of technology, the event management cannot remain the same. It has now shifted focus fro the chief guests to the entire participants. When planning for an event today, it is crucial to consider a more captivating approach that would produce maximum excitement. For instance, there a Polylogue challenge, live performance by different bands and events extravaganza that allows audience participation. Certainly, the motivation is not only entertainment, but also a wider concept of enriching modern events with new festival events. Types of Festivals-style Strategies Certainly, sitting down in events for long corporate and professional lectures can be the most boring thing ever (Lucia 2013). Todays events have seen an incredible transformation through integration of strategies that have largely helped to revamp the industry with energy. It presents a shift from time when entertainment was part of keeping the audience attention to the speaker to a modernize entertainment that is a critical component of the events. Phi et al., (2014) agrees that festival-style events encapsulate the use of music, sport and other off-meeting events to form an integral part of the event. With increased festive activities, the event managers have helped offer a better and a lively platform to execute successful events. Firstly, over the past five years there have been a rising crowd-sourced installation that help engage festival-goers with visual art world. It involves the use visual arts that are given focus during the event that creates a sense of ownership to the contributors of the artistic displays. Crowd-sourced ideas are the greatest innovative approach in festival-style events because it helps set the mood for the event or at times helps culminate an event in the most exciting manner possible. For instance, it could be a traditional idea like Yoko Ono festive where guest were told to write down their wishes, it was one of the best festival-style strategy that made the event memorable (Mallen 2013). In addition, this strategy can be applied by the corporate organizations to create a marketing platform or by states to create a tourism marketing of the artistic skills. Rojek (2014) states that festival-style events have been designed using "Go Mobile" strategy. Majority of hospitality events today are organized and performed outdoors allowing an array of festivities during the events. The purpose is to create a wide range of entertainment ranging from band performance to actual audience performance in an impromptu, but systematic manner. Through go mobile festival-style, it allows the participants to take a drink and move around as they enjoy a myriad of festive events. It, therefore, presents a shift from the traditional fixation to seats to lively festival-events. Furthermore, festive-style events employ the lost lecture style that eliminates the long formal speeches that aver been the traditional approach used in conferences (Church 2013). It is all about creating a non-corporate mundane environment that allows the audience to participate actively as opposed to passive involvement. Wahab., et al (2014) further affirm that it entails choosing a spacious and favorite location of the event that would create a magical effect to the participants. The primary goal in hospitality is to create a serene and best event strategy; certainly festival-events have been one of the remarkable milestones to the industry. In addition, festival-style events involve unconference strategy, this means a counter-intuitive approach that allows flexibility of events and agenda. It creates participants organic involvement around the theme of the event. It encompasses a marketplace discussion that develops to yield the key events of the meeting. Besides, it dismisses a chronology of events and discourages the use of a linear list of speakers. In order to qualify to be a festival-style event, it should borrow heavily from the ability to demystify events and create a fascinating audience experience. Evidently, there are substantial grounds to believe that this trend will be long-lived as oppose to short-lived. Firstly, there have been tremendous efforts within the hospitality career development to nurture innovative and creative event managers. With increased innovations, it is likely that there would be more variety of activities that would come into play. Advantages of Festival-style Events to Independent Meeting Planner (IMP) Evidently, the perfect choice of organizing meetings, conventions and conferences is through the use of IMP services. These meeting planners have diverse knowledge in event organization and corporate conferencing (Church 2013). For instance, Professional Congress and Marketing Agency (PCMA) is an international independent meeting planner. It has successfully organized many meetings in Europe, Asia and America (Mair & Whitfold 2013). In line with the festival-style events, they can incorporate several strategies that would introduce a shift from conference-based lectures to a more dynamic and captivating events. Firstly, they can adopt unconference strategy where the agenda is discussed with the participants and dealt with in a non-formal presentation. The hallmark of this approach is not to underscore the role of facilitators, but to create a participatory meetings and conferences that each person will be proud to have contributed. Besides, it can adapt some other festival-style strategies that include "Pecha Kucha " talks that involve a series of short standup presentations using a multimedia approach (Wahab et al., 2014). As used in Japan, it offers a quicker recap of the main meeting agenda and builds on the assumption that those in the conference have access to the presentations through online resources and other media. The focus of festival-events is to enrich events with creativity and idea innovation. Conclusion With the modern technology and rise of innovative generation, event management has seen the introduction of festival-style approach that allows for an informal approach to meetings, events and conferences. It is a mental shift towards creativity and innovation that serves to ensure that events are owned and created for participants, but not facilitators. In addition, it borrows heavily on introducing entertaining events mixed with an events agenda in order to make events most fascinating and desirable. The new approach dismisses the existence of mental rigidity in event organization and presents a new trend that is arguably the best approach. It is likely that the majority of corporate and governmental bodies will adopt this latest trend due to the ability to evoke participants involvement in events. References Church, E. (2013). Event management 27 success secrets. Brisbane, Australia: Emereo. Drake, C. N. (2013). Maximising effectiveness of corporate hospitality programmes at Australian special events. International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 4(3), 236-248. Kim, J., Boo, S., & Kim, Y. (2013). Patterns and trends in event tourism study topics over 30 years. International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 4(1), 66-83. Lucia, M. D. (2013). Economic performance measurement systems for event planning and investment decision making. Tourism Management, 34, 91-100. Mair, J., & Whitford, M. (2013). An exploration of events research: event topics, themes and emerging trends. International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 4(1), 6-30. Mallen, C. (2013). 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