Festival value in multicultural contexts: City festivals in South Africa

Abstract

<jats:p> Worldwide, the number and variety of cultural festivals have grown dramatically. Many areas see festivals as an important way to attract tourists, and their spending, to a region, resulting in a positive economic impact. While they offer important opportunities for artistic producers and audiences, there is growing pressure for festival organizers to demonstrate their value to society beyond their economic impact. Like many countries, South Africa has a strong focus on increasing diverse cultural participation, demonstrating the social, nonmarket values of events that receive public funding. Using data from two South African festivals, the article uses a valuation framework developed by the South African Cultural Observatory to demonstrate measures of audience diversity, the use of quality of life measures to gauge the impact of culture on well-being, and the use of community focus groups to assess the impact of participation on social cohesion and capacity building. </jats:p>

Tourist intensity in medium and small Spanish cities. Urban tourism research using a quantitative indicator: Tourism Intensity Index (TII)

“…This bibliography is very oriented to the study of cultural tourism; a high proportion analyzes the tourist dynamics in historic centers and how they contribute to the construction of destinations and to urban regeneration. Less frequent but of great interest are publications oriented to analysis of tourism segmentation and the creation of specialized cultural products, such as museums (Gómez, 2012) or cultural festivals (Barrera-Fernández et al, 2017;Georgoula & Terkenli, 2018;Gómez & Guzmán, 2017;Snowball & Antrobus, 2020), along with works related to language tourism (Pardo-Abad, 2011). Also noteworthy are studies like those by Vázquez-Varela and Martínez-Navarro (2016) that analyze the impact that high-speed rail development has had on tourism in medium and small cities, or those that delve into aspects related to sustainability (Del Espino Hidalgo et al, 2016).…”

Supporting the festival industry in troubled times: Higher education research and collaboration with festivals in South Africa during COVID-19

“…Festivals in South Africa before COVID-19 were a booming sector: In 2018, Van Heerden and Saayman (2018) found that there were more than 600 festivals of various kinds per year in South Africa. Although some of them were already starting to experience a drop in visitor numbers (and spending) as South African economic growth slowed, festivals were still seen as an excellent way to increase tourist spending, support the creative economy, and improve access to arts and culture for audiences (Snowball and Antrobus, 2021).…”

“…The Rhodes University research team are also linked to the creative industries through the South Africa Cultural Observatory (SACO), which is a national research organisation funded by the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture. Involvement with SACO meant that the research team were in a good position to engage with the sector, building on previous work on the impact and development of festivals, and other parts of the creative economy, in South Africa (SACO, 2022; Snowball and Antrobus, 2021; Snowball and Gouws, 2022)…”

Construction of Evaluation Indicator System of Festival Tourism Activity Effect Based on FAHP Method

“…It is due to the change of policy and travel mode, resulting in a high concentration of people traveling during the holidays, causing huge traffic pressure on the traffic network and tourism activities in some tourist cities, and indirectly reducing the pleasure of tourists' travel [9][10][11]. Therefore, the problem of holiday tourism traffic congestion and the problem of activity effects have gradually become an unfavorable factor that restricts the development of tourism-based city transportation and tourism economy [12][13].…”