hallmark events as a destination marketing tool

www.bournemouth.ac.uk

Hallmark Events as Destination

Marketing Tool.

A study on Twitter

Conversations.

Nigel Williams,Alessandro Inversini, Dimitrios Buhalis &

Nicole Ferdinand, School of Tourism, Bournemouth University

Academy of Marketing 2014


About FestIm

• Fusion Project funded by Bournemouth

University

• @FestIMCon2014

• Conference

• Workshop

• LiveStream

• Videos


Events and Destinations

• Festivals celebrate or express historical, social or cultural aspects of a particular host community (Getz, 2005).

• Festivals can be used to promote a destination (Getz 2005):

i. as a place marketing tool

ii. as tourist attraction,

iii. as animator of existing tourism facilities

iv. as an image-maker for a destination.


Events and Destinations

• Festival encourage repeat-visits (Schofield & Thompson, 2007) and international visitors (Lee, Lee, & Wicks, 2004) to destinations

• However, no consensus in current literature

• Eg Prentice and Anderson (2003) suggest that events do not change the image of a destination


Social Media

• Social media playing a growing role as an information source for travellers (Hays et al., 2013).

• Customers share fact and opinion, impression and sentiment, experiences, and even rumour (Blackshaw & Nazzaro, 2006).

• Generation of eWord of Mouth (eWOM -Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004), magnifing other marketing efforts and influence group decision making processes


Why use Twitter?

• Structural characteristics (Tufekci,2014).

• Friend Follower relationships

• Lists

• Hashtags

• Content of interactions (Humphreys, Gill, &

Krishnamurthy, 2013)

• Similar to how individuals meet in real life

• Amount of personal information revealed


What’s in a Tweet?

• Common perception is that tweets only

contain text


What’s Actually in a

Tweet


What’s Actually in a

Tweet?


Twitter for Research

• Can be modelled as an information

network

• Has been used in research on:

• Disaster recovery

• Flu tracking (Sadilek et al 2012)

• Marketing

• Politics


Research Design

• Exploratory case study based on

Bournemouth Air Show and Bournemouth

destination

• Festival, 1 million attendees August 29th to

September 1st 2013,

• Research compares the online narratives

generated by the Festival and the host

community on twitter to examine the

influence of the festival on the destination


Research Questions

• RQ1: Does the online festival and

destination community form distinct

clusters when sharing information on

Twitter?

• RQ2 Who are the critical stakeholders in

these hubs?

• RQ3: What are the narratives within these

hubs?


Research Process

• Four step approach: • Archive tweets from Keywords “Bournemouth Air

Festival” OR “Bournemouth Air Show” and

“#BmnthAirFest” and “#NightAir from 1 week before to

1 week after the festival

• Isolated information network in the form of (i) replies,

(ii) retweets and (iii) mentions.

• Social network analysis to identify stakeholder groups

(Clauset, Newman, & Moore, 2004)

• Text analysis was used to identify the themes of

discussion in each cluster and the location of

members.


Tweets over Time

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

number of tweetsdestination

number of tweetsairshow


Results

• Bournemouth Location ,30161 Tweets, Air

Festival, 3121 tweets

• Formed distinct clusters with modularity >

0.7

• Indicates that distinct stakeholder groups

do exist for analysis


Air Show Network

Group1 Group2 Group4

Group3 Group5


Critical StakeholdersGrp Bournemouth Location Air Festival

User Characteristics User Location User

Characteristics

User Location

1 Bournemouth

residents and users

Bournemouth

region

Bournemouth

media

accounts

Bournemouth

region (Dorset)

2 Football fans Highly

international.. Music fans

Bournemouth

region

3 Band and fan

accounts

Highly

international..Bournemouth

media

Bournemouth

region

4 Tourists Non

Bournemouth

UK residents Music fans

Bournemouth

region (Dorset)

5 Accounts of service

providers, event

organizers, venues

UK residentsSupport

services,

charities

Bournemouth

region (Dorset)


Main Themes

Discussed

Grp Bournemouth Location Air Festival

1 Destination related topics. Dominated by

conversations about the air festival and

related issues.

Official media coverage by

Bournemouth Media

2 Football Related topics of discussion

including rival teams and players.

Dominated by discussions of

Night Air Concert staged as part

of the Air Festival3 Fans and Performers at Night Air and

other music acts

Media discussions of non air

festival topics

4 Videos and photos of Bournemouth

Locations including the beach and town

Fans of bands and performers

at Night Air Concert

5 Discussions on events and parties in the

Bournemouth Location. Service

providers, minor celebrities

Bournemouth Blog community


Classification of

Networks

• Size (Volume of conversations)

• Destination >30K, Event <3K

• Span ( Geographic Range of Participants)

• Destination: International, Event, Dorset/UK

• Scope (Topics Discussed)

• Destination: Broad range of topics discussed

• Event: Narrow range of topics discussed

• HOWEVER, destination specific narratives (eg

beach) were stimulated by event


Example of Event

Influence

god kids watching the red

arrows and walking on the

Beach with the dog

#bournem…@DanylAJohnson

agghhhhhhh Danyl I live in

to fly past :-)

#BournemouthSaw the

@rafredarrows for the first time ever

today. On Bournemouth

pier . Unbelievably incredible.

#redarrows

#verymuchimpressed"@CGammon

d you still in Bournemouth, I'm

heading down shortly

#answeryourphone"RT


Discussion (Findings)

• Online Narratives may be a useful way of

examining the contribution of Festivals to

Destination Marketing

• Events directly and indirectly stimulate

discussions about an event

• Twitter provided an overview of “public”

discussions, may be an indicator of overall

online discussions


Discussion

(Methodology)

• Hashtag analysis is not sufficient, need to

include search terms.

• Combination of SNA and Text enabled the

understanding of both structure and

content of online narratives

• Process can be replicated by downloading

tweets from suppliers like sifter.com or

GNIP


About FestIm

• Fusion Project funded by Bournemouth

University

• @FestIMCon2014

• Conference

• Workshop

• LiveStream

• Videos


References

• Adjei, M. T., Noble, S. M., & Noble, C. H. (2010). The influence of C2C communications in online brand

communities on customer purchase behavior. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 38(5), 634-653.

• Beerli, A., & Martin, J. D. (2004). Factors influencing destination image. Annals of tourism research, 31(3), 657-

681.

• Clauset, A., Newman, M. E., & Moore, C. (2004). Finding community structure in very large networks. Physical

review E, 70(6), 066111.

• Bigne, J. E., Sanchez, M. I., & Sanchez, J. (2001). Tourism image, evaluation variables and after purchase

behaviour: inter-relationship. Tourism management, 22(6), 607-616.

• Blackshaw, P., & Nazzaro, M. (2006). Consumer-generated media (CGM) 101: Word-of-mouth in the age of the

web-fortified consumer. A Nielsen BuzzMetrics White Paper, Second Edition, Spring.

• Borgatti, S. P., Mehra, A., Brass, D. J., & Labianca, G. (2009). Network analysis in the social sciences. science,

323(5916), 892-895.

• Getz, D., Andersson, T., & Carlsen, J. (2010). Festival management studies: developing a framework and priorities

for comparative and cross-cultural research. International Journal of Event and Festival Management, 1(1), 29-59.

• Sevin, E. (2013). Places going viral: Twitter usage patterns in destination marketing and place branding. Journal of

Place Management and Development, 6(3), 227-239.

• Schofield, P., & Thompson, K. (2007). Visitor motivation, satisfaction and behavioural intention: the 2005 Naadam

Festival, Ulaanbaatar. International Journal of Tourism Research, 9(5), 329-344.

• Tufekci, Z. (2014). Big Questions for Social Media Big Data: Representativeness, Validity and Other

Methodological Pitfalls. arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.7400.

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