Profiling Masquerade Festival Attendees in Ghana

Abstract

etc. Invariably, however, such studies have tended to be Eurocentric in content and implications. Not unexpectedly, studies from Africa and other less developed economies dwell on traditional festivals (Rea, 2007). That is the point of departure for the current study, which presents the background to and results from a study undertaken IntroductionIn the past couple of decades, festival and event tourism has emerged as one of the fastest growing segments of the world leisure industry (Getz, 1991(Getz, , 2005Nicholson & Pearce, 2001;Salamone, 2000). A concomitant interest among academia is reflected in the large number of studies into various aspects of the industry: attendees' motivations This article describes a study profiling 241 attendees to the 2014 masquerade festival in Winneba in Southern Ghana according to their support for and past membership of the competing masquerade groups. Three cohorts of attendees were used to highlight the differences that exist in terms of their demographics and trip/event profile, information sources, and how satisfied they were with various facilities and services provided by the event organizers. The study found that two cohorts belonged to or supported a masquerade group while the majority neither belonged to nor supported a masquerade group nor ever been masqueraders. The demographic profile of the majority subsample showed they were likely to be female, young, employed with above-average incomes and educational attainment. Their main source of information on the festival was friends, and they also tended to be intolerable of the long ticket queues and other appalling conditions of the event venue more than the other subgroups and this had implications for marketing and product development.