Interaction of foreign visitors of the EXIT music festival with domestic visitors and local population

Abstract

The EXIT Music Festival has been held annually in Novi Sad since 2000. Owing to its excellent organization, it has become popular among the youth population around the world. Moreover, it succeeded in attracting a large number of foreign visitors after long years of their absence in the streets of Novi Sad, which also created a basis for the research of their relations with the local population and the interrelation of their cultural and social influence. The paper presents the evolution process of the Music Festival with a special emphasis on the opinions of both foreign and domestic visitors about their mutual interrelations, as well as the opinion of the local population about the foreigners visiting Novi Sad during the EXIT Festival. A questionnaire conducted in 2006 on two sets of samples, one of 200 respondents in the EXIT campsite, and the other of 100 inhabitants of Novi Sad also suggest a starting point for further research in the aforementioned interaction among the visitors, as well as for a study of the relationships between the local population and the festival visitors. This was also the aim of the paper.

What will prevail within citybreak travel, motivation or demotivation?: Case study of Novi Sad, Vojvodina, Serbia

“…Today, and for the last 19 years the famous music festival Exit is present (Besermenji et al, 2009;Cimbaljević et al, 2019). Mentioned Novi Sad's major event provides the opportunity for experiencing the destination's culture and increasing visitor's knowledge about Novi Sad and Serbia (Zakić et al, 2009,).…”

Perceptions of 'Srem Folk Fest' participants according to cultural tourism preferences

“…Participation in the festival, organization, quality of the program, expertise and dedication to the performers, top-notch equipment, were all highly rated by the participants and they agree that this is the real professional experience for them. Respecting the claims of Zakić et al (2009), it might affect the future visits of festivals in Serbia (in the narrow and broad sense) by foreign tourists, as well as spreading the positive word of mouth, as an effective marketing tool for creating the favorable image of this destination.…”

Aesthetic Awareness and Spectacle: Communicated Images of Novi Sad (Serbia), the Exit Festival, and the Petrovaradin Fortress

“…Furthermore, event organizers recognized the importance of making up for the "lost decade" of the 1990s that youths in Serbia missed, so they can now experience popular international artists and meet more international visitors. Research on the Exit Festival exists looking at the setting/venue of the event in the Petrovaradin Fortress (Besermenji, Pivac, & Wallrabenstein, 2009, host/guest interactions (Zakić, Ivkov-Džigurski, & Ćurčić, 2009), culture and entrepreneurship (Dušica, 2011), foreign visitor demographics (Željko & Lović, 2011), and politics, youths, and city/country image (Wise, Flinn, & Mulec, 2015).…”