Constraints to attend events across specialization levels

Abstract

Purpose: This paper examines the constraints to attend events & festivals across recreation specialization segments.Design/Methodology/Approach: In-depth interviews with salsa dancers from three salsa specialization levels were carried out.Findings: Specialization level acted as a predictor of salsa event attendance and there appears to be an event career associated to progress in salsa dancing specialisation, which eventually branched out to a tourist career. Moreover, there was a relationship between the types of constraints and recreation specialisation level, with participants negotiating constraints frequently in order to ensure event attendance.Research limitations/Implications: The interviews were carried out on participants in a mid size town in Southern England, where the range of competing leisure activities is limited. In addition, the study focused on one recreational activity and one type of events. Practical implications:Several implications for the marketing of events & festivals can be drawn. First, marketers of salsa events should tie closely with providers of salsa classes and marketers of salsa classes need to provide opportunities for salsa dancers to attend events. Second, marketing strategies aiming at helping recreationists overcome constraints should be different according to the level of specialization. Third, given the nature of constraints faced by the less experienced recreationists, efforts to attract individuals earlier in the specialization path may be fruitless.Originality/value: This paper is one of the first to explicitly examine the relationship between specialization and constraints to perform behaviors associated to a recreational activity.

The Attractiveness of Australian Events to Chinese Visitors and Barriers to Attendance

“…Few studies have examined the barriers to event attendance (Deery, Jago & Fredline, 2004;Santos-Lewis & Moital, 2013). Nonattendance to special events is related to demographic and family to Surf Fun Run, Floriade Flower Festival, Gold Coast 600 Motor Race, and Melbourne Cup House Race.…”

“…Well-researched areas include motivations and constraints for attendance (e.g., Crompton & McKay, 1997;Dewar, Meyer, Li, 2001;Funk, Alexandris, & Ping, 2009; S.-K. Kim, Byon, Zhang & Kim, 2013;X. Li & Petrick, 2006;Santos-Lewis & Moital, 2013;Van Zyl & Botha, 2003), audience typologies and expectations (Mackellar, 2013), attendee experience (e.g., Robinson & Clifford, 2012), events as destination image builders and marketers (e.g., Chan, 2015;Prentice & Andersen, 2003;Richards & Wilson, 2004), event evaluations (e.g., Getz, 2002;Williams & Bowdin, 2007), and impact studies 698 FREDLINE AND JIN 5-year period from 2011 to 2015, approximately 8.8% of Chinese visitors to Australia have attended festivals, fairs, or cultural events.…”

Can smart tourism technology enhance destination image? The case of the 2018 Taichung World Flora Exposition

“…Mega-events are one-time or periodic global cultural or sporting events (Tsaur et al , 2017). Studies have adopted the perspectives of event motivation (Li and Petrick, 2006), event image (Kim et al , 2014) and constraints on event attendance (Santos-Lewis and Moital, 2013) to explore the perceptions and behaviors of tourists attending mega-events. However, few studies have investigated the effects of smart tourism technology (STT) and PV of mega-events on tourists’ MTEs.…”