A strategic approach to international event tourism

Events are about creating memorable experiences (Pine and Gilmore, 2020) but they are not organised in a vacuum and have repercussions on the host destination. It is in this context that Whitford (2009) in her analysis of event policy discusses how the tourism potential of events is one of the main economic reasons why Governments are so keen to support them (Viol et al. 2018). This is summed up by McGillivray and Turner (2018) who discuss how towns, cities and countries bid for and host events primarily because they attract visitors and their money. In fact, Roberts (2015) goes as far as to state that the economy of most cities and holiday resorts would stutter without a stream of major and minor events. However, it would be naïve for a destination to simply jump on the ‘event tourism bandwagon’ and assume that an event will generate tourism benefits. To maximise the tourism potential of an event it is essential that tourism impacts are planned properly. In this chapter the authors will discuss why the host destination must adopt a strategic approach to event tourism, the tenets of this approach before applying its use to the region of Northern Ireland in the case study.