James Kennell

Events management: an introduction

Contemporary events management is a diverse and challenging field. This introductory textbook fully explores the multidisciplinary nature of events management and provides the student with all the practical skills and professional knowledge they need in order to succeed in the events industry. It introduces every core functional area of events management, such as marketing, finance, project management, strategy, operations, event design and human resources, in a vast array of different event settings from sport to political events. This new edition has been updated to include: • New and updated content on developments in technology, risk management and event volunteering. • New and updated case studies that include emerging economies. • New industry voices by international practitioners. Every topic is brought to life through vivid case studies, personal biographies and examples of best practice from the real world of events management. Written by a team of authors with many years’ experience of working in the events industry, Events Management: An Introduction is the essential course text for any events management programme.

Analysis of the UK Government's 2011 tourism policy

This review considers the UK Governments 2011 tourism policy document. The policy was produced during a period of public sector restructuring in the UK and also during the global economic crisis, which began in 2008. The policy sets out a number of reforms to the governance of tourism at the national and local levels, which aim to increase the level of private sector involvement in leading and developing the tourism sector and to reduce the sectors dependence on public funding. During a period of economic slowdown in the UK, the tourism industry can make a significant contribution to growth, but it is not yet clear whether these proposed reforms will support or impede the future development of the tourism industry in the UK.

Educating the 21st century event management graduate: Pedagogy, practice, professionalism, and professionalization

This article discusses whether event management can yet be classified as a bona fide profession, how staff working in the industry can be effectively professionalized, and how professional university education programs can be better designed to achieve this end. The article discusses the findings and limitations of some of the existing literature concerning professionalism within event management, and whether event management can yet be wholly described as “a profession” according to conventional definitions. The event management profession and event management education are discussed in terms of improving pedagogy in relation to the requirements of event industry practice. Finally the work concludes that the challenges of educating future event professionals require a rethink of events education so as to develop more reflective practice.

A grey literature review of the Cultural Olympiad

This article considers the development of the UK Cultural Olympiad supporting Londons successful bid to stage the Olympic Games in 2012. It suggests that the Cultural Olympiad is a complex event itself and needs to be better understood if any impacts are to be felt in a meaningful sense. The event is thus considered through review of over 50 documents relating to its management, in the context of a number of identified themes: cultural development, developing institutional frameworks, social benefit, educational benefit and promotional benefit.

Dark Cities? Developing a Methodology for Researching Dark Tourism in European Cities

Despite the recent growth of research into dark tourism (Dale & Robinson, 2011; Lennon & Foley, 2000 Thomson, 2000; Stone, 2013; Tarlow, 2005) and the growth of the dark tourism market (Biran & Hyde, 2013; Stone, 2005; Stone & Sharpley, 2008), there has been little interest shown in understanding the relationship between dark tourism and urban tourism (Page & Hall, 2002). This paper presents the initial findings of a research project that investigates the dark tourism products offered by European cities. A series of keywords were developed following a review of the dark tourism literature and this was used carry out a content analysis of the Destination Marketing Organisation websites for Europe’s ten most visited cities. The content analysis used Stone’s (2006) Dark Tourism Continuum to evaluate the dark tourism products offered in each destination and to present a descriptive overview of Europe’s city-based dark tourism offer. The paper concludes that there are a wide range of dark tourism products available to urban tourists in Europe, but that these are rarely conceptualised as such. The mixture of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ dark tourism products presents difficulties in categorisation and standardisation of the urban tourism offer, but this is a potential area of new product development for DMOs across Europe.

Urban tourist motivations: why visit Ljubljana?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a new perspective on urban tourist motivations by applying the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model to help to understand how tourists make decisions about which destinations to visit. Design/methodology/approach This study was based on 30 one-hour-long structured interviews with visitors to Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia. Respondents were asked to express their preferences between different pull-factor motives for their visit, using Saaty’s scale, and further qualitative data were collected to examine these preferences in more depth. Findings The results of this study indicate that the most relevant criteria and thus predominant factors in motivation for visits to Ljubljana are the Cultural and Nightlife pull factors, while religious and business motives are the lowest ranked factors. The paper argues that the results show the value of applying the AHP model to understand the role of pull factors in urban tourism destination choice. Research limitations/implications As a single-destination case study, it is important that the findings of this research are evaluated against similar studies in other cities. A limitation of this research is the fact that sub motives within major groups of pull-factor motives have not been explored in this study and this should be the subject of future, more detailed research. Originality/value This research shows the value of applying an under-used methodology to understand urban tourist motivations and knowledge gained through applying this method will be of value to destination marketing organisations as well as to researchers conducting future studies.

The Impact of Motivation Factors on Spending at a Public Sector Festivals Programme

This paper explores the impact of motivation factors on spending at a London local authority’s programme of cultural events. The total local economic impact of the programme was estimated at £1,605,765, which represented a return on local authority investment of 6.61:1. We also take a closer look at the motivational and demographic data collected as part of the study. Using regression analysis, it identifies large variations in spending by different motivational groups of attendees. Attendees motivated to attend to ‘meet new people’ were found to be the highest spending group by some margin. In addition, the data shows that local audiences are the lowest spenders at these events and that there is no link between previous attendance and event expenditure. We identify a significant relationship between event attendee motivation and event expenditure, which suggests ways in which these public sector events can be developed and marketed in the future, as local authorities balance the competing priorities of local inclusion and generating local economic impact, through their event programming.

Dark Cities: A dark tourism index for Europe’s tourism cities, based on the analysis of DMO websites

Purpose: Dark tourism is a topic of increasing interest, but it is poorly understood when considering its significance for mainstream and commercial tourism. This paper investigates the significance of dark tourism in the top ten most visited European tourist cities and proposes a dark tourism index for Europe’s tourism cities. Methodology: Data was collected from the websites of the cities’ Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) using a content analysis methodology, based on keywords related to dark tourism taken from the research literature in this area. Descriptive statistics were produced and the variance between the frequencies of keywords related to each city was analysed for statistical significance. These results were then used to construct a darkness ranking of the cities. Findings: There are significant differences in the extent to which dark tourism products and services are promoted by the DMOs of Europe’s top ten most visited European cities. The ranking of cities by darkness does not correspond to the ranking by visitor numbers, and further qualitative analysis suggests that that the ranking is also independent of the actual presence of dark sites within the destination. This implies that European city DMOs are engaging with the emerging dark tourism market with to varying degrees. Research Limitations: The purposive sample of ten cities can be extended in future research to increase the validity of the findings of this paper. A further limitation is the selection of keywords for content analysis, which have been developed following the literature review contained below. Future research could develop an extended list of keywords using a systematic review process. Research Value: This paper shows that it is possible to create a ranking of tourist cities in terms of their darkness, and that this methodology could be extended to a much larger sample size. This links dark tourism research to the urban tourism literature and also offers possibilities for creating a global ranking that could be used by destinations to judge their success in engaging with the dark tourism market, as well as by tour operators seeking to develop products for the same market.

Sun, sea and shrines: Application of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to assess the attractiveness of six cultural heritage sites in Phuket: Thailand

In order to make recommendations for the diversification of tourism products on the Thai island of Phuket, this paper applies the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to rank the attractiveness of six cultural heritage sites in the island of Phuket to make recommendations for sites that could be incorporated in to cultural tourism development in the region. In addition, it applies a quantitative-qualitative evaluation structure with weighted criteria, based on local expert opinion. The research identified which of the many potential cultural tourism sites would be the most attractive to tourists and shows the utility of the AHP method, combined with quantitative-qualitative evaluation, for decision making in tourism destination development contexts.

Carrying capacity, tourism

Carrying capacity is a concept that has been widely applied in tourism and recreation studies since the 1960s, but its emergence can be traced to the 1930s. Although it can be viewed as an important concept in the eventual emergence of sustainablity discourse, it has become less popular in recent years as sustainability and associated concepts have come to dominate discussions on the management of tourism and its impacts. Measurements of carrying capacity were first used as a way of deciding optimum stocking rates in agriculture. In addition, its measurements have been utilized in fields such as ecology, biology, and population studies. In livestock research, carrying capacity was defined as the maximum number of grazing animals that could make use of a defined area, and this natural-resource based tradition (Saarinen 2006) has informed many tourism studies. Thus, attempts were made to arrive at a single, ideal number of tourists who can make use of a tourism resource at any given point ... This is an excerpt from the content