MEGA TOURISM EVENT

Negative Impacts of a Mega Tourism Event

Negative Impacts of a Mega Tourism Event

As the range of tourism festivals and major tourism events has grown over the years, their impacts have increasingly come under the scrutiny of funders, policy-makers and planners. Various evaluations and more indepth studies have found that large scale events have a variety of potential impacts, including economic, social, tourism, political, physical and environmental ones. What is more, these impacts are not always necessarily positive, but can be negative as well, or have a positive effect on one dimension (e.g. economic) while having a negative effect on another (e.g. environmental or tourism).

International Hospitality Week is an industry mega event featuring the Nightclub & Bar Convention and Tradeshow, the International Restaurant Show and the Hotel World Expo and Conference. International Hospitality Week drew in more than 30,000 hospitality professionals with exhibit floor action, pre-conference workshops, session highlights and networking events. International Hospitality Week was more than just a convention and tradeshow, as networking and after hours events took place throughout the week. International Hospitality Week kicked things off with a welcome lunch and an opening kick-off party for attendees and exhibitors. Other happening events included the Top 100 Party, DJ Spin-Off, Back-of-the-House restaurant and nightclub tours, International Hospitality Week Golf Classic, and the Five Stars Awards Dinner.

Much of the literature studying event and festival impacts builds on the early work in the area of event tourism, in which Getz (1997), Ritchie (1984) and Hall (1992) are the most often cited authors. However, these studies are not specifically designed to measure the impacts of tourism events, and their methods have mostly been applied to hospitality events. This review therefore specifically assesses the available literature dedicated to measuring the impacts of large scale tourism events and festivals. It is not so much concerned with the outcomes of these studies as with a discussion of the types of impact studied and the methods used. For this reason, conceptual studies or commentaries have not been taken into account, unless they included a discussion or example about how to measure impacts. The review does not claim to be exhaustive but aims to give a general overview of the scope of studies and the preferences in research topics and methodological approaches. The main focus is on research undertaken in the UK over the last 15 years (1993-2008), but relevant studies from the EU and the rest of the English speaking world have been included as well.

A total of 50 publications were identified, which were consequently grouped according to size of event type.? Of these, 16 studies looked at major tourism festivals, defined as multi-annual events with an international reputation, built over a period of time. A total of 14 studies were dedicated to tourism mega events, typically large scale, short-term events with a one-off nature, which attract the largest range of participants and media coverage. A further 20 studies were dedicated to the impact of the European Capital of Culture event, which ...