ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the phenomenon known as event tourism: its development, impact and use by tourism organizations and destinations to grow tourism markets. The promotion of event strategies to pump-prime, nurture and develop a visitor market, based upon the premise of ‘attracting non-residents to the community with the expectation that their spending will contribute significantly to the local economy’, is now a well-established principle in event tourism. Event-related tourism provides a sharpened focus for destination managers and planners to help develop both the tourism markets and the tourism capacity with the hosting and staging of events. Bidding for events has been achieved successfully by Glasgow’s City Marketing Bureau, which sought to reposition the city as an event destination, with the help of its acclaimed city branding. Events are a temporary phenomenon and every event is a unique combination of where and when it is held, its theme, design and style and the participants, spectators and organizers.
