Surfing the Fringe: An Examination of Event Tourism Strategies of the Bleach Festival—Coolangatta Queensland

Abstract

Created as a celebration of art, music, and surf culture, the Bleach Festival was designed as a fringe-style event to be positioned in the week between two major surf events (Quiksilver/Roxy Pro and Burleigh Pro) held annually in Coolangatta, Queensland, Australia. Using visitor data collected at the event, in conjunction with an in-depth interview of the event's manager, the study evaluates the success of the festival against its own objectives of tourism extension, destination brand development, and local artist engagement. Additionally, the study explores the utility of augmentation strategies in achieving these objectives. Resultant issues in measuring the value of arts and cultural development in conjunction with tourism are further discussed.

Event Market Segmentation: A Review Update and Research Agenda

“…Descriptive statistics such as frequencies and means were the most popular method [96.7% (current), 94.2% (initial), p = 0.400] for both reviews. However, unlike Tkaczynski and Rundle-Thiele's (2011) earlier research that identified a high number of studies (15.8%) employing descriptive statistics as the sole analysis method, only one study in the current review (Mackellar, 2014) exhibited this trait. Potentially due to the usage of data analysis techniques in PASW, the number of segmentation studies employing factor analysis [56.7% (current), 38.3% (initial), p = 0.008], analysis of variance [45.6% (current), 31.7% (initial), p = 0.040], and cluster analysis [27.8% (current), 11.7% (initial), p = 0.004] have risen in the past 7 years.…”

Issues, patterns and strategies in the development of event portfolios: configuring models, design and policy

“…Edinburgh thus, in marketing itself as a creative and cultural hub, provides a focus for businesses to work together toward developing festivals in the city. The portfolio is supported by government at all levels and by tourism business development groups (Mackellar, 2014). The basis of the portfolio is an adequate venue infrastructure, facilitating the staging of major and smaller community events in the yearround programming of the portfolio.…”

The role of iconic-historic commemorative events in event tourism: Insights from the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the fall of the Berlin Wall

“…The use of festivals and events for explicit event tourism goals may aim at, for example, attracting tourists off-season, dispersing economic benefits derived from tourism, marketing and branding of the destination, using events as a catalyst for urban (re-)development and animating specific areas or attractions (e.g. Allen et al, 2011;Connell et al, 2015;Getz, 1991;2005;Getz and Page, 2016a;Hall, 1992;Mackellar, 2014;Mariani and Giorgio, 2017). All of these outcomes are embedded in the underlying key propositions presented by Getz and Page (2016a), mentioned in the introduction of this paper.…”

“…In an image-saturated society and in a competitive globalised world, where effective destination brands are becoming increasingly important, events can be used for destination promotion as well as the construction of a destination brand (e.g. Dinnie, 2011;Mackellar, 2014;Mendes et al, 2011). The widespread use of events for tourism-related outcomes such as the above has given rise to the study and strategic implementation of event tourism.…”

“…The concept of event tourism refers to the process of using planned events for the development and marketing of destinations for tourism (Getz, 2008). In the academic literature this phenomenon has recently been investigated from perspectives such as destination branding (Mendes et al, 2011;Mackellar, 2014), tourism strategy and product development (Connell et al, 2015;McKercher, 2016;Stokes, 2008) as well as stakeholders and partnerships (Mariani and Giorgio, 2017;Todd et al, 2017).…”