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The purpose of the study is to compare features of career development and fandom in frequent festival attendance in the context of Finnish music festivals.

The study uses a mixed methods research approach and employs two theoretical frameworks: theories of career development and fandom.

In frequent festival attendance, both festival career development and festival fandom are most clearly present in motivation development and social dimensions.

Strategically, frequent festivalgoers should be considered as crucial stakeholders, who might mobilize the co-creation of a sense of community or festival brand.

Music-related fandom has been previously investigated in relation to artists and specific musical genres, but not so much in relation to music festivals in general. Career studies, on the other hand, concentrate heavily on sports events. There is a scarcity of research scrutinizing both career development and fandom in the festival context within the same study, and festival attendance as part of music tourism is an under-researched area.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a within-gender analysis and between-gender differences in seeking (personal and interpersonal) and escaping (personal and interpersonal) motivations to attend a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia. Specific objectives were: to conduct a within-gender analysis in motivations to attend a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia; and to examine between-gender differences in motivations to attend a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia.

Based on the data collected from 458 attendees at a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia, the authors employed network analysis for within-gender analysis and MANOVA and ANOVA for between-gender comparison. The network analysis served two purposes, in that it examined each item’s predictability for each gender, and analyzed the correlations among motivation items within each gender. In addition, the General Linear Model served to compare the male and female groups’ motivations to attend the non-traditional festival. The authors first performed MANOVA for each dimension and then ANOVA for each dimension’s individual items.

Within-gender analysis reveals that several sets of motivations were associated strongly for both genders. This suggests that Saudi Arabians seem to enjoy entertainment because it projects the festival mood; they want to escape both from home and work and attend the festival to relieve stress by changing their routine pace. However, gender differences were apparent in several other items, especially for the group of women. Between-group comparison analysis shows significant gender differences in several elements of motivation. Overall, personal seeking and escaping were greater for males than females. In contrast, interpersonal seeking was greater for females than males.

Entertainment seems to be a key contributor to the festival mood because entertainment and the festival mood were related closely for both genders. In fact, personal and interpersonal escaping means were greater than personal interpersonal seeking means for both genders. Indeed, opportunities exist to develop non-traditional festivals in the country further. Gender differences were identified in several items of personal seeking and escaping, and interpersonal seeking. With respect to personal seeking, men tend to seek the entertainment, festival mood and the event’s uniqueness more than do women, a finding that their higher means in personal escaping supported. It is clear that men view the festival as a way to enjoy themselves to escape from their jobs and daily stress to a greater degree than do their female counterparts. Women are more likely to seek interpersonal experiences in that they are more likely to enjoy the festival because it offers the opportunity to meet new people and spend quality time with family and friends. This study has several limitations, leading to suggestions for future research. Because seeking and escaping motivations have been used relatively little in the festival setting, future researchers should develop a valid scale of personal and interpersonal seeking and escaping motivations specifically for festivals employing both qualitative and quantitative methods. Second, while the data were collected at a single non-traditional festival, future research can use multiple sites to increase the ability to generalize the findings. Third, although this study was limited to Saudi Arabia, further research can apply seeking and escaping motivations, both at the personal and interpersonal levels, to other cultures to extend the applicability of the framework used in this study.

Non-traditional festival managers need to focus on an atmosphere that provides festivities, as many people in the Saudi Arabian culture appear to be escaping from their everyday lives to enjoy themselves and with family and friends. To appeal to male workers, festival organizers and managers need to advertise and market the events’ mood and liveliness overall with photos of workers leaving the office free of stress and looking forward to attending an event. To appeal to women who desire unique experiences that a variety of forms of entertainment provide, event managers must ensure that the entertainment is innovative and creative, and differs from what other festivals provide to attract more female attendees. Also, festival planners must focus on events that incorporate the family unit and promote the opportunity to meet new people to appeal to women in Saudi Arabia.

This is the first study to examine gender differences in festival motivations in Saudi Arabia. The relaxation of the historically strict and conservative cultural values, coupled with the country’s desire to develop its tourism and event sector, provides an ideal opportunity for future research. The authors hope that this research will stimulate further interest in the country with the goal to develop and market its tourism sector and products on the world’s stage.

The paper focusses on festivals taking place in coastal regions whose central element is seafood. The purpose is to analyse the role of seafood festivals as potential tourist attractions for local development. The decision to focus on coastal areas is based on a perceived knowledge gap regarding the interactions between different sectors of the sea economy.

Qualitative exploratory case studies of seafood festivals in Italy and Sweden have been performed using an analytical model. The participatory observation methodology contributed to a better understanding of the phenomenon.

The analysis shows the close relationship between seafood and tourism, and although it takes variable forms, food is a fundamental lever for maritime and coastal tourism and local development. Findings suggest that local food events can help strengthening gastronomic identities, despite there is a different articulation between tradition and marketing in the two countries.

Since this paper represents an exploratory study of five seafood festivals, research needs to be extended and replicated before any findings can be generalized. However, the model is flexible enough to be tested in different food events.

Food events represent a key instrument for the integration of territorial policies in which tourism and food products might be used as strategic instruments for the development of coastal areas.

This paper is a first attempt to analyse and compare seafood events, contributing to filling the gap in event literature referring to coastal areas. The model introduced can be used to determine the articulation of tradition-marketing in different food events.

To explore the value in reminiscing about past festivals as a potential way of improving wellbeing in socially isolated times.

The paper uses previous research on reminiscence, nostalgia and wellbeing to underpin the analysis of self-recorded memory narratives. These were gathered from 13 pairs of festivalgoers during Covid-19 restrictions and included gathering their individual memories and their reminiscences together. The participant pairs were a mix of friends, family and couples who had visited festivals in the UK, Finland and Denmark.

Four key areas that emerged through the analysis were the emotions of nostalgia and anticipation, and the processes of reliving emotions and bonding through memories.

Future studies could take a longitudinal approach to see how memory sharing evolves and the impact of this on wellbeing. The authors also recommend undertaking similar studies in other cultural settings.

This study findings have implications for both post-festival marketing and for the further development of reminiscence therapy interventions.

The method provides a window into memory sharing that has been little used in previous studies. The narratives confirm the value in sharing memories and the positive impact this has on wellbeing. They also illustrate that this happens through positive forms of nostalgia that centre on gratitude and lead to hope and optimism. Anticipation, not emphasised in other studies, was also found to be important in wellbeing and was triggered through looking back at happier times.

Spiritual tourism is becoming a significant growth area of the Indian travel market, with more Indians opting to go on pilgrimage to popular religious cities. There are many spiritual destinations where some of this life's essences can be sought to enjoy harmony and peace. The study aims to prioritize motivators driving the intentions of the tourists to visit the spiritual destination.

The current study applied the analytical hierarchical process, a multi-criteria decision-making technique, on the sample of visitors from all the six spiritual destinations to rank the motivational factors that drive the intentions of the tourist to visit a spiritual destination.

The study's results postulated that spiritual fulfillment motives and destination atmosphere are the top prioritized motivations, while destination attributes and secular motives emerged as the least prioritized.

The research study provides valuable insights to the spiritual tourism industry stakeholders to target the tourists' highly prioritized motivations to augment the visits to a particular spiritual destination.

Previous research has explored the motivations and modeled their relationships with tourists' satisfaction and intentions. But, the present study has applied a multi-criteria decision-making technique to add value to the existing knowledge base.

This study aimed to determine the motivations of a select group of South Africans in terms of their potential engagement with cultural tourism; more specifically, the study set out to show whether these motivations influence the cultural activities that the tourists want to participate in and whether their interest in specific cultural activities determines their destination choices. Furthermore, the mediating role of activities in the relationship between cultural motivations and destination choice was also assessed.

An online panel survey collected responses from 1,530 potential cultural tourists across South Africa. Hypotheses were tested, using structural equation modelling.

The results show that tourists' motivations for cultural tourism influence their likelihood of participating in specific cultural activities. Cultural tourism is shown to be influenced by more than learning and includes entertainment, relaxation, novelty and escape dimensions. There also seems to be a difference in the activities engaged in by destination type. For example, tourists likely to take part in indigenous cultural tourism activities are more likely to do so at hedonic destinations.

This paper contributes to the understanding of cultural tourism activities, aiding destinations in attracting cultural tourists. Destinations need to develop activities that match visitor motivations, increase satisfaction and encourage visitors to return.

The paper increases the understanding of cultural tourism in South Africa and underlines the importance of communities in providing distinctive tourism activities. The study also has an important social dimension, highlighting the role of social status in cultural tourism consumption and destination selection.

Zoos are important urban tourism attractions. The challenge for zoos is finding a balance between attracting visitors and enhancing education and conservation management. This research contributes to a greater understanding of the conservation intentions of zoo visitors and how zoos can emphasise conservation management principles sustainably. This study aims to identify the variables that encourage conservation intentions among visitors to a South African zoo.

A destination-based survey was conducted in 2019 at the Johannesburg Zoo, and 445 questionnaires were administered through convenience sampling.

Exploratory factor analyses identified visitors’ conservation awareness because of zoos (pre-conscious, conscious and unconscious), behavioural intentions (advocating and supporting), motives (engagement, edutainment and escapism) and satisfaction (interaction and facility quality, and service and interpretation quality). The behavioural intentions were the dependent variables. Advocating conservation intentions (ACI) is an active role where zoo visitors feel a strong responsibility towards conservation and encourage others to the conservation cause. Supporting conservation intentions (SCI) relates more to loyalty towards visiting the zoo and subsequently supporting conservation. Stepwise linear regression analyses revealed that enhancing ACI relies on SCI, edutainment, conscious awareness, service and interpretation quality and total spending. However, enhancing SCI relies on ACI, interaction and facility quality and the motive, escapism, while engagement revealed a negative relationship.

The results show that zoos can encourage SCI to ACI by using interactive and entertaining interpretations to teach visitors about the zoo’s mandate and the importance of conservation while balancing their need to escape.