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The purpose of this paper is to develop both a systematic framework and priorities for comparative and cross‐cultural festival management studies, based on literature review and results of a four‐country study.

This research is based on four samples of festivals in Sweden, Norway, UK, and Australia that are systematically compared. The survey is designed to profile the festivals in terms of vision/mandate, ownership, age, size, assets, venues used, decision‐making structure, and programs. Costs and revenues are examined in some detail, including trends in each category. Festivals' use of volunteers and sponsors are specifically addressed. Levels of dependence on a number of types of stakeholders and other strategic management issues are also explored. Respondents are also asked to respond to statements regarding challenges and threats to their festival and organization.

The empirical research identifies important similarities and differences that exist within the UK, Sweden, Norway, and Australia, by three ownership types, in how festivals are organized, their operations and strategies, stakeholder influences and dependencies, threats, and strategies.

In the recommended framework are five components: antecedents; planning and management; planned event experiences and meanings; outcomes and the impacted and dynamic patterns; and processes. Specific points of comparison are enumerated within each component, foundation theories and concepts are identified, and some research priorities suggested for each.

The framework developed in this paper can help advance both the process and applications of comparative festival studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the utilisation and application of reflexive ethnography as an interpretative methodology for researching knowledge practices within festival organisations.

The ethnographic approach incorporates two methods of data collection in the research design; participant observation and in‐depth interviews.

The research identified that knowledge management practices and processes are often invisible to festival staff when they are embedded within a cohesive organisational culture. Ethnography enables the researcher to make explicit the tacit and normalised ways of working that contribute to the success (and failure) of festival organisations to manage knowledge. The immersion of the researcher in the ethnographic process provided a rich understanding of the relational dimension of knowledge management that would be difficult to elicit from in‐depth interviews alone.

New fields of study require a range of research methodologies to inform theoretical and practice‐based knowledge related to event participation and management. This article contributes to the growing event management literature through a unique focus on ethnography as a research method that offers a deeper understanding of knowledge practices within festival organisations.

Limited research has applied an ethnographic approach to festival and event management. This article builds upon early adopters and provides critical insight into the benefits and constraints of ethnographic research.

This article aims to provide a critical review of the articles included in this special issue and highlight their findings and contribution to events, festivals and destination management research.

The article critically reviews methodologies, findings, themes and conclusions offered by each article included in this special issue.

The articles in the special issue identify the latest thematic trends in events, festivals and destination management research and propose conceptual frameworks for event and festival life cycle trajectories. They build on previous research confirming how accessible tourism and a balanced event portfolio can increase the sustainability and competitiveness of the destination. Based on sound methodologies, they offer specific theoretical and practical implication for the successful planning, marketing and management of events, festivals and destinations. They provide suggestions on how event innovation, participatory sport events, mega sport events, food and wine festivals and meetings, incentives, conferences and events (MICE) can assist in the marketing and branding of the tourism destination.

The articles in this special issue lay the foundation for future research in events, festivals and destination management. Articles in this special issue apply various research methods and analysis, indicating the growth of event and festival research. Research methods and analysis techniques used in the special issue include content/theme analysis, case studies, qualitative studies and questionnaires. The research articles and methodologies used in this issue should help both researchers and industry practitioners.

This study highlights key findings, theoretical and practical implications and contributions of the articles included in this special issue. It provides a holistic view of events, festivals and destination management research and suggests areas for future research.

Community-run festivals are an emerging giant in the tourism industry. Nowadays many local festivals have emerged with the specific objectives of celebrating local culinary traditions, establishing business and trade of local products and developing sustainable destinations. Local events can influence the destination image, enabling the growth of tourist flows and stimulate destination marketing organizations to differentiate their own destination products from those of competitors. Two main aspects are analyzed: the main characteristics of local events and the influence of local festival on destination image. Moreover, the economic impact of festivals on the community and the main tourism management strategies adopted by managers are investigated. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications deriving from the chapter are discussed.

The music festival industry is challenged by intense competition and financial exigency. As a result, many festivals have either folded or are currently struggling. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to show that motivator-hygiene-professional (MHP) strategic capabilities (SCs) are positively associated with quality music festival management thereby providing a playbook for potentially mitigating these challenges.

The mixed methods research design comprised a case study of a leading event management company as well as nation-wide in-depth interviews and questionnaire survey. The authors initially confirmed the nature of the challenges to the industry from the case study and the in-depth interviews. The authors then developed an MHP Model of 15 SCs that were identified from the literature and the qualitative research. The relationship of the MHP SCs model to quality music festival management was tested in the questionnaire survey.

The respondents suggested that all the SCs were related to quality music festival management. However, Professional SCs were considered comparatively less important than motivator and hygiene SCs. Across all three groups, interviewees highlighted the significance of artists, site and operational planning, financial and stakeholder management and ticket pricing. In addition, careful planning, delegation and quality focus, problem solving, resolve and flexibility, leadership and vision, communication and innovation were considered conducive to the quality management of music festival organisations.

The MHP SCs model and dimensions of quality management offer music festival event managers a detailed practical playbook for moderating challenges to music festival management. In essence the authors provide the specific drivers that festival managers should best focus their attention upon. Visionary leadership, artist differentiation, innovation, customer service and flexible management have priority.

The findings add to the festival management literature by demonstrating the importance of motivator, hygiene and additional professional SCs for moderating challenges to the music festival industry. To the best of authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have directly investigated specific SCs critical for quality event and festival management. In particular, the academic significance of this paper is that the authors have combined Herzberg’s motivator and hygiene factors with SCs, which are in essence success drivers, to create a novel holistic MHP SCs model for quality music festival management. Further explanatory insight is gained by the addition of a third factor of professional SCs.

The purpose of this study is to propose a sustainable festival management model (SFMM) drawing on data from the International Troia Festival, Çanakkale, Turkey.

Three research techniques were used in the study. Survey data examined six motivational dimensions whose importance were tested using the logistic regression analysis. In-depth interviews and observations were analyzed using content analysis. The study sample comprised festival event attendees, members of public and private businesses and NGOs.

The field research indicated that, culture is the main factor, which motivates visitors to attend the festival and also the main theme of the festival that reflects the significant cultural heritage of the city. A SFMM is presented for the International Troia Festival, based on the results of the field research and literature.

The findings of this study solely of SFMM were identified during a Turkish festival.

Future applications of SFMM both for generating development of local or international festivals in a sustainable way and for resolving general or regional environmental challenges on festival management are discussed. The model can be used to ensure the sustainability of the International Troia Festival and similar festivals.

The purpose of this paper is to get insights on a real-life portfolio of events from a demand-centred prospective, based on the identification of factors influencing the degree of attendee’s satisfaction, with the ultimate aim of identifying commonalities and prospective cross-leverage strategies among events.

Data from attendees to three major events taking place in Funchal, the capital city of Madeira, were analysed based on multivariate statistics and categorical regression owing to the overwhelming presence of categorical data in the database. The econometric analysis pursued in this paper is based on a sample of 1,830 tourists.

The research demonstrates that the impact of the socio-economic variables and travel arrangements on attendees’ satisfaction is rather irrelevant, irrespective of the event under analysis, with cross-cutting factors defining the overall quality of any event (mainly technical aspects such as aesthetical elements, organization and opening hours) determinant in predicting the overall degree of satisfaction. Another key finding relates to the existence of a number of commonalities among events, in terms of tourists’ profiles, market orientation, themes and resources laying ground to define ready-to-apply cross-leverage strategies.

The analysis concentrated on three major events taking place in the capital city of a peripheral region. The content of the questionnaire co-developed with the destination management organization with order to get access to a large sample of respondents.

Lessons to be learnt in terms of managing a disparate collection of events developed over time in an ad hoc manner. A few examples of cross-leverage strategies are put forward.

The analysis and empirical content portrayed in this study contribute to the literature on event portfolio via description of real-life case examples of how to develop competencies based on post-event analysis in a proactive manner.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the management strategy changes of a government-hosted festival from the government’s perspective based on Ansell and Gash’s (2008) definitive criteria of collaborative governance.

This is a longitudinal case study of Hi Seoul Festival (HSF) in South Korea from 2003 to 2013. First, a detailed description of HSF management strategy change over time is presented through an analysis of internal government documents. Then, factors influencing management strategy changes are investigated through interviews with governmental and professional stakeholders.

The content analysis of the internal government documents reveals that HSF’s management strategy changed between collaborative governance and contracting out multiple times. The follow-up interviews then found that the prehistory experiences in managing festivals, the change of festival goals, and political leverages influenced the management strategy changes.

The government is one of the key stakeholders of festivals, which sometimes hosts and manages its own festivals. However, how a government manages its own festival is rarely studied. This study would add new insights into the studies of government-hosted festivals.

This paper aims to examine the role of grassroots (food) festivals for supporting the sustainability of micro and small producers, whilst exploring potential productive linkages between both stakeholders (festivals and producers) for enhancing a more authentic cultural offering and destination image in the visitor economy.

This paper is exploratory, qualitative and inductive. Evidence is underpinned by a purposive sample, drawing on ten in-depth interviews and 17 open-ended survey responses collected across 2014 and 2015 – drawing perspectives from traders participating in the EAT Cambridge festival.

This paper unpacks a series of serendipitous [as opposed to “strategic”] forms of festival and producer leveraging; strengthening B2C relationships and stimulating business to business networking and creative entrepreneurial collaborations. Positive emergent “embryonic” forms of event legacy are identified that support the longer-term sustainability of local producers and contribute towards an alternative idea of place and destination, more vibrant and authentic connectivity with localities and slower visitor experiences.

This study emphasises the importance of local bottom-up forms of “serendipitous leverage” for enhancing positive emergent “embryonic” legacies that advance “slow” tourism and local food agendas. In turn, this enhances the cultural offering and delivers longer-term sustainability for small local producers – particularly vital in the era of “Clone Town” threats and effects. The paper applies Chalip’s (2004) event leverage model to the empirical setting of EAT Cambridge and conceptually advances the framework by integrating “digital” forms of leverage.

This research explores the consequences of a health crisis provoked by a pandemic scenario on music festival impacts considered by the stakeholders involved. The purpose of this paper is to identify the perceptions from the stakeholders' point of view (host community, public and private sector) and to identify the impacts generated before and after a health crisis regarding the celebration of a festival.

The study offers a holistic insight into impact research by music festivals. The methodology implemented is based on qualitative techniques. By conducting 20 in-depth interviews with essential stakeholders, it is possible to determine their perceptions of the impact of the event and the effects of a health crisis.

The results allow detecting a gap between internal and external stakeholders due to poor communication and planning of the event. The results show that a health crisis provokes negative impacts on the economic benefits of events' organisation. However, the cultural city's identity suffers an important damage that it is difficult to overcome. The community and visitors are the stakeholders that suffer a detrimental impact on their experience when attending the festival, considering the security measures. Moreover, results allow us to identify practical implications for event management and planning in a health crisis scenario.

The most important contribution of this research is the theoretical model proposed to analyse stakeholders' perception of the event celebration in a context of a health crisis. The model also considers different moments of the social exchange. The theoretical approaches considered theory of social exchange (SET) and Visitor, Industry, Community and Environment (VICE) models allow analysing the stakeholder's perception of a case study of a music festival (Viña Rock Festival, Spain). The emerging and central role of the cooperation between stakeholders constitutes another notable contribution to the literature.