The Importance of the Location in Hosting a Festival: A Mapping Approach

Abstract

As consumers simultaneously consider a broader range of festivals in a crowded market, festivals often face higher competitive pressures. Configuration theory suggests that these pressures lead to specific groups of festival configurations that best fit their competitive environment. In this study, data on the competitive pressures of 139 Dutch music festivals are used to explore design features that organizations use to adapt to their competitive pressures. The empirical results show that there are three distinctive groups of music festival configurations in The Netherlands. One group of typically larger festivals is orientated towards the music industry at large and involves industry participants, music fans, and other festival visitors that come together on a festival site. For this particular group of festivals, the location, per se, plays a minor role in the competition for visitors. In contrast, the location plays a key role for visitors in the midrange and smaller festival groups: urban music festivals and countryside pop and rock festivals. The results explain why certain festivals seem to be able to move to another location without losing too many visitors (or even grow as a result). From a hospitality management perspective, the results show that some festivals have a lower location dependency than others.

KEYWORDS:

• event management
• event design
• hospitality
• festivals
• configuration theory
• destination competitiveness