Marketing special event tourism in urban destinations: a case study of Wellington, New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis addresses the role of special events in marketing urban destinations. By using Wellington as a case study, the thesis questions how events can be used to market a destination, and how a destination can market events. The focus of this study is on three main areas of the literature: urban tourism, tourism marketing and special event tourism. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were used to obtain data from the Wellington Regional Tourism Organisation (RTO), event marketers (events and event venues), and tourism businesses (accommodation and transportation providers). The study highlights how the special events strategy works in collaboration with other marketing strategies used by the city, rather than as an independent initiative. Budget and the overlapping of events are the most frequently mentioned challenges faced by all the event marketers. Event marketers agree that having more events in the city is better than not having enough events but they are concerned that the events calendar is not managed well, with too many events happening at the same time. Despite this problem, event marketers and marketing representatives of tourism businesses have positive feelings about Wellington as an events destination due to the support they receive from the Wellington City Council and Positively Wellington Tourism (PWT), as well as the local community. The main market for event marketers appears to be Wellington and the surrounding region. Marketing to potential visitors outside of Wellington is considered too costly by some event marketers to tackle on their own. It is also not a priority given that their needs are met with the local market. However, most events work closely with PWT in marketing to domestic and overseas markets through PWT's marketing campaigns. The Internet was found to be one of the most popular marketing mediums used by event and event venue marketers, and this has important implications for the events industry in dealing with a target market that is internet savvy.