Avoiding burnout: the succession planning, governance and resourcing of rural tourism festivals

Abstract

Small rural tourism festivals can struggle with governance issues, including succession planning and problems with leadership. This could be linked to several factors, including the largely voluntary composition of organising committees, lack of resources, or the stage the festival has reached in the event life cycle. Surprisingly, little research has explored these challenges, despite the ongoing viability of these festivals often being crucial for the socio-cultural and economic sustainability of local communities, attracting tourists and income, and providing social benefits. A phenomenological qualitative study was conducted, involving in-depth interviews with 13 organisers and stakeholders of 7 rural Australian festivals, together with background studies of the communities involved and their festivals. Findings highlight the different approaches taken by rural communities to manage the growing complexity of festival organisation, including finding new committee members and dealing with perceptions that these committees are not representative of the whole community. Issues of burnout were raised, linked to the increasingly onerous regulatory and administrative burden of managing and staging these events. This created a need for greater professional assistance, generally from local government: consideration is given to the pros and cons of this development. The paper provides a micro-study of wider community tourism governance issues.

Rural tourism: the evolution of practice and research approaches – towards a new generation concept?

“…In the often intensely personal world of local politics, skilled leadership is an essential but rare commodity, and at its best it brings informed, far-seeing and effective governance to the diverse and complex world of rural tourism. Frost and Laing (2015) focus on one important detail of leadership: the governance of volunteer groups and local partnerships. They base their work on a review of local festival organizations, on the need to avoid burnout for volunteer leaders, and the essential long-term assistance role of the public authorities.…”

Expanding the Domain of Festival Research: A Review and Research Agenda

“…Even though almost all studies in this review were set within the positivist paradigm (Burrell and Morgan ), some recent examples have embraced alternative paradigms, including critical realism (Jepson et al . ; Vestrum ) and interpretivism (Frost and Laing ; Stadler et al . ).…”

“…). Such complications are particularly common for small festival organizations (Frost and Laing ). In response to such festival‐specific organizational issues, it has been argued that festival management research must provide more dedicated advice that is not based on the findings of generic events research or general management theory to better support the development of festivals over time (Getz et al .…”

“…The earliest relevant article was published in 1978 and discussed the attitudes of communities towards festivals (Heenan 1978). While it explored an interesting topic that continues to receive academic attention (Frost and Laing 2015;Quinn 2005), Heenan's (1978) article did not generate an immediate response within the academic community. It took 10 years before the call for further research on festivals was heeded (Frisby and Getz 1989;Getz and Frisby 1988).…”

“…To date, festival research has concentrated on economic impacts (Litvin et al 2013;Rao 2001); analysis and profiling of attendees and audiences (Prentice and Andersen 2003;Song et al 2014); and investigations of operational and managerial aspects (Frisby and Getz 1989;Frost and Laing 2015). Less research has investigated those involved in staging festivals or the factors and processes contributing to their outcomes (Gursoy et al 2004).…”