Residents versus visitors at light festivals in cities: the case of Barcelona

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, cities around the world have created light events in order to improve their competitive position and make themselves more attractive to tourists. The relative novelty of these events means that the academic literature has not yet developed a corpus of knowledge outlining the visitor profile and behaviour characteristics. Thus, a study of the Barcelona event ‘Llum BCN’ was conducted in order to characterise the demand and detect possible differences in demand behaviour according to whether the attendees are residents or visitors. Comparisons between residents and visitors show that residents are more highly motivated to attend the event than visitors. On the other hand, residents show higher levels of satisfaction in variables related to the type of illumination during the event, particularly innovative design elements.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural tourism
• events
• light festival
• attendees’ behaviour

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Raquel Camprubí http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7084-7889

Lluís Coromina http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0769-0633