Territorial Marketing Applied to Cultural Tourism: Assessment of Cultural Event Impacts

摘要

This paper examines the impact of cultural events such as festivals on tourism development in host territories. Event Marketing and Regional Studies are widely considered disciplines with still uncertain and not fully defined contours. In order to highlight the extent and the relevance of developing researches into these fields, it is proposed here a study able to demonstrate the operational validity of marketing in favour territorial development. Cultural events are able to strengthen the local identity and to enhance the vocational resources, both tangible and intangible, of an area. This paper analyses the event DEAfest as a tool of territorial marketing to increase the competitiveness of the Reggio Calabria's peripheries, becoming a distinctive symbol of the territory. The research work addresses the issues of territorial promotion and analysis of touristic attitude of destinations providing an innovative application of the input-output methodology, used in the economic impact analysis. The results of our study showed that the holistic strategic planning model views the destination planning process as encompassing a number of independent yet interrelated components, as well as a set of methodologies that start from regional approach, engrafting methods of economic evaluation and cultural studies.