The next edition of the Event Tourism Forum will take place in Cape Town on 26-28 March 2020, coinciding with “Africa’s Grandest Gathering”, the annual Cape Town International Jazz Festival.
The Jazz Festival draws more than 35,000 festival goers from around the world. It is one of many major events, contributing hundreds of millions to the local economy and enabling the creation of thousands of temporary jobs.
The Forum will unpack the investment strategies made by all the stakeholders to generate big economic pay-offs through events, and, at the same time, using it as a means to promote a destination to new visitors.
The key learning theme of the Forum will focus on the potential partnership opportunities that exist for local government, provincial/state and national government, with event organisers, and how they could create win-win partnerships to also extract value from out-of-town visitors.
Strategic international partnerships are also key in assisting with the growth of events, and the resulting benefits for a destination and its local attractions.
According to Lead Facilitator, Gerrit Davids, Director at TaranisCo Advisory, “The Forum will lend itself to an open conversation wherein all stakeholders can share ideas and concepts on sustainable strategies on how to partner each other in order to manage the challenges posed by an uncertain and disruptive economy”.
The Forum will have a major focus on event funding and sponsorship strategies, debating the main consideration as to, “what sponsors and funders want, and how organisers should align their proposals to their business objectives, rather than to its own desires”.
It will also deal with issues pertaining to additional revenue generating streams such as crowd funding, integrating big data, virtual reality, digital and social media into the event experience, as well as creating online audio and video channels to further increase income.
The Forum will have a major focus on event tourism and how organisers could use their economic impact research reports as an effective tool to get government support for their events.
Theme: “Event Sponsorship and Key Principles of Event Tourism Metrics & Economic Impact Measurement”.
- The role of government in creating an enabling economic environment for sustainable major events;
- Event organisers partnering government to forge sustainable visitor strategies;
- Expanding events to other locations in partnership with government;
- Stakeholder partnerships between event organisers and the hospitality sector;
- Why, the use of data and economic impact surveys, will improve the sustainability of major events;
- Why local attractions, heritage sites, museums partner major events to attract more visitors;
- Event safety and the limits of liability.
The Forum will feature leading industry thought leaders and destination management organisations (DMOs), local tourism associations/boards, event organisers and others, sharing their knowledge on how to design and host sustainable events for all stakeholders and partners.
The aspect of measuring the socio-economic impact of an event is also of key importance in order to assess the sustainable impact in terms of the “Event Measurement Framework – Event Indicators”, as designed by the National Tourism Department. Each event indicator will be unpack extensively, in order to give both government and event organisers an idea, as to how to design events in-line with this prescribed Framework.
For further details, contact Gerrit Davids on 082 496 1657 or info@taranisadvisory.co.za.
