IMPACT OF FESTIVALS IN CULTURAL TOURISM PROMOTION

Introduction

Recently festivals are considered to contribute significantly to the cultural and economic development wealth of Nigeria. Festivals have major impact on the development of cultural tourism to the host communities. The festival organizers are now using the historical and cultural themes to develop the annual events to attract visitors and creating cultural image in the host cities by holding festivals in the community settings. The desire for festivals and events is not specifically designed to address the needs for any one particular group. The hosting of events is often developed because of the tourism and economic opportunities addition to social and cultural benefits. Many researchers have contested that local community’s plays vital role in development of tourism through festivals.

Events have the potential to generate a vast amount of tourism when they cater to out-of-region visitors, grants, or sponsorships, (Getz, 1997) of direct or indirect intent. The government now support and promote events as part of their strategies for economic development, nation building and cultural tourism. The events in turn are seen as important tool for attracting visitors and building image within different communities. In view of Stiernstrand (1996), the economic impact of tourism arises principally from the consumption of tourism products in a geographical area. According to McDonnell, Allen and O’ Toole (1999), tourism related services, which include travel, accommodation, restaurants, shopping are the major beneficiaries of the event.

As far as events and tourism is concerned, the roles and responsibilities of governments as well private sector and society in general have significantly changed over the last decade. The situation have been changed where the state had the key responsibility for tourism development and promotion to a world where the public sector is obliged to reinvent itself by relinquishing of its traditional responsibilities and activities in favor of both provincial/ state and local authorities. This indicates the growing influence on the behaviour of governments and business in general of development of event and tourism industries. This suggests that festivals impact on the host population and stakeholders in a number of ways. These factors are primarily concerned with social and cultural, physical and environmental, political and economic impacts, and can be both positive and negative

Cultural Tourism

Cultural tourism is defined "Travel directed toward experiencing the arts, heritage and special character of a place." It is also seen as the movement from one geographical area to another, people can come in contact with theses culture by accident, Visiting Family and Friends (VFF).The culture is an identity and the importance that individual people place on local and national social organizations, such as local governments, education institutions, religious communities, work and leisure. Cultural tourism describes tourist the once who take part in the cultural activities while away from their home cities. Cultural tourism is that form of tourism whose purpose is to discover heritage sites and cultural monuments on their travels.

The theme of culture has grown over the last two decades but not clear definition of culture has accepted by the community has whole. The culture in modern day is seen as a product by the governments, large organizations and individual people to develop their own standings in the given market. Wyman states that culture plays important part in the society:

"...In an economic climate where we hear so much about crisis in health and education, it is important to remember that culture, too, is an essential element of a healthy society. It's not an either-or situation. Health is necessary for life; culture makes life worth living...."

http://www.culturematters.ca/index.html

Furthermore, cultural tourism relates to those individual groups of people who travel around the world, individual country, local community and individual events that seeks to experience a heritage, religious and art sites to develop knowledge of different communities, way of life. This can include a very wide range of cultural tourist experience. It can include, for example, performing arts, festivals visits to historic sites and monument, education tours, museums, natural heritage sites and religious festivals.

Development of Cultural Tourism through Festivals

The festivals have changed over the years, before festivals were associated with key calendar moments, linked specifically to particular seasons and heritage sites. Over the last decade these have been changed and developed upon, there is now a broad and diverse range of festivals events taking place all over the world. Getz (1997, p.1) introduces festivals events as a:

“Events constitute one of the most exciting and fastest growing forms of leisure, business, and tourism-related phenomena.”

The revolution in festivals has been stimulated through commercial aspect to meet the changing demand of the local community groups and increasing business opportunities for the events organizations and local businesses. Festivals play a major part in a city and local community. Festivals are attractive to host communities, because it helps to develop local pride and identity for the local people. In addition, festivals have an important role in the national and host community in context of destination planning, enhancing and linking tourism and commerce. Some aspects of this role include: events as image makers, economic impact generators, and tourist attractions, overcoming seasonality, contributing to the development of local communities and businesses, and supporting key industrial sectors.

The festival organizers are now using the historical and cultural themes to develop the annual events to attract visitors and creating cultural image in the host cities by holding festivals in the community settings. Festivals provide an opportunity for the local communities to develop and share their culture, which create a sense of values and beliefs held by the individuals in a local community and provide opportunity for members of the local community to exchanges experiences and information. Festivals provide the tourist the opportunity to see how the local communities celebrate their culture and how this effects the community development, it also helps the visitors to interact with the host community and help people to enjoy and meet their leisure needs.

The peoples and communities that host the festival provide the visitors with a vibrant and valuable culture. In addition, culture is the personal expression of community heritage, community perspective, it provides cultural opportunities for the visitors to enjoy and experience local illumination and culture. The festivals also provide support to those who pursue economic opportunity related to sharing community culture with the broader world. UNEP (2002) suggest that the culture tourism is boosted through the development of festivals and events. Tourism can add to the vitality of communities in many ways. One example is that events and festivals of which local residents have been the primary participants and spectators are often rejuvenated and developed in response to tourist interest.

Impact of Festivals on Host community
The event organizers do not take into account the social and environmental impact in to consideration. It is argued that there is a clear need to adopt a holistic approach:
In any location, harmony must be sought between the needs of the visitor, the place and the host community
(English Heritage, 2000 p.29).
Host communities play a major role when running a major sporting event or any other large scale events. Also, major sporting events play a major role in host communities. The work of Getz (1997) was concerned with the event manager gaining support and resources from the host community, while also looking at the local benefits and costs, cultural meanings of their event and also the political factors. If all this is taken into consideration then it can lead to a good event and even a good relationship between event and local community.
A problem a host community may have with the event is the influx of people and it being unable to cope. This may have a knock on effect in terms of traffic congestion, crime and vandalism. Also Smith (1989) tells of how the socio-cultural impacts result from the interaction between ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’. A number of factors may contribute to difficulties in this relationship. The transitory nature of a visit to a historic centre may be too short to allow any understanding to be established. Repeat visits may be more positive in this context. Visitors, especially those on day visits, have temporal constraints and become more intolerant of ‘wasting time’, for example in finding somewhere to park. Spontaneity may break down as ‘hospitality’ becomes a repetitive transaction for the host.
The impacts of events can greatly affect the quality of life of the local residents. Therefore, it is been argued to adopt strategies to take into control the social and environmental impacts of festivals into analysis when carrying out economic impact of the each individual event. The event organizers only take into consideration the economic implications and ignore the resident perceptions, which provide important non-economic dimension for gauging how events benefit or impinge on the host community (Jeong and Faulkner, 1996; Hall, 1992).
The festivals have a number of impacts arose on the host city, ranging from cultural, economic, social and environmental. Festivals have both positive and negative impacts on their host cities, but emphasis is often focused on the economic analysis. Hall (1992) suggests that the ability of major events perceived to attract economic benefits of events often provide the official justification for the hosting events.
Economic analysis of events provides one aspect of why events are held and the effects that they have on a region. However, while many of the economic impacts of events are quite tangible many of the social are not. (Hall, 992 p.10)
The full assessment of economic impact must also take into account other aspects. The benefits sought by the development of the cultural tourism through festivals are similar to the economic roles of events defined by Getz (1997). Getz believes that:
“The economic role of events is to act as catalysts for attracting visitors and increasing their average spend and length of stay. They are also seen as image-makers for the destination, creating a profile for destinations, positioning them in the market and providing a competitive marketing advantage.”
Economic impacts may be presented using results of benefit/cost analysis, input/output analysis, and simply economic benefits to local society.
Getz demonstrates the potential benefits of events below:

Attraction • Expansion of season • Spread of tourism geographically
Image Maker • Hallmark events • Destination theme and positive image		Animator • Static Attractions • Public Facilities • Markets and shopping
Catalyst • Urban Renewal •  Infrastructure • Business and     Economic    development		Alternative Tourism and Sustainable Development

  Tourism-related roles of festivals and special events
According to Getz (1997) economic impact assessments often include a multiplier calculation to demonstrate that incremental tourist expenditure has direct, indirect and induced benefits for the local economy. At the most basic level, economic impact analysis techniques estimate average per-person spending, multiplied by the total number of visitors/users to determine the direct spending associated and then apply multipliers to estimate secondary or indirect economic effects. The multiplier usually used in tourism impact studies is the “income multiplier” which is basically a coefficient which expresses the amount of income generated in an area by an additional unit of tourist spending.
Abuja Carnival
The Abuja carnival has become major calendar event for the city of Abuja, festival has developed the cultural tourism and created cultural image for all groups of the communities. The city has also long been world-renowned for its rich history, culture and heritage and for hosting leading international events giving it excellent tourism infrastructure.
The Abuja carnival developed since 1999 and it has become a major hotspot for artistic and tourist to enjoy multi-cultural events during the month of November each year. The carnival has developed the following programmes over the years to attract visitors from all over the world to demonstrate multi-cultural image. Each summer it is host to the world’s largest arts carnival
The Abuja carnival has developed significantly over the years, yet the founders' original intentions are closely reflected in the current aims and objectives this highlights the point that even though Abuja is a successful carnival destination at present to remain competitive in the global marketplace it must continually invest in it to retain and improve on its position. It has been estimated that tourism is worth over £1.1 billion per year to Nigeria and supports over 27,000 jobs if it is giving the adequate support it requires, with this, business tourism and conferencing accounts for around £120 million annually with its value increasing year on year.
The Abuja carnival attracts tourist from all over the world, over the last decade the cultural tourism have increased in large numbers.  The success of Abuja as a carnival destination can be attributed to a combination of factors. The visitors come to Abuja either specifically for the International Festival or its unique heritage and cultural history, Abuja also renown for it conferencing destination.
A report carried out by the Business Tourism Forum and Business Tourism Advisory Committee highlights Abuja as a strong business tourism destination but detected certain infrastructure weaknesses including:
• Insufficient number of direct flights and the lack of a direct transport link into the city centre.
• Inadequate exhibition space attached to the center.
• Need for an additional 400-500 bedroom hotel to act as headquarters hotel.
Moreover, this increasing value of business tourism to the city can be contributed to Abuja becoming the Nigerians leading conferencing destination according to the International Convention and Congress Association (ICCA).

Conclusion
Conclusively, festivals have contributed in the development of cultural tourism it attracts culture tourists to local community events to promote cultural exchanges between tourists and resident. The cultural tourism brings benefits to the host cities, these benefits are not been analyzed in greater depth.
The research suggests, there is no doubt that tourism festivals have major effects on the local economy directly and indirectly. That the spending by visitors on local goods and services by event-tourist has a direct economic impact on local businesses and also pass the benefits more widely across the economy and the community. On the other hand, soft cultural tourism does not take into account the loss of local beauty, environmental degradation and effects it creates on the local people of the host communities through their direct and indirect involvement with tourists.
The study also found that some leading authors, Goldblatt 2002, Getz 1997 and Hall, 1992 argues that the festival organizer and local government only take into account the economic impacts and ignores the implications of social impacts of the festivals. They argue that greater attention should be paid to the social impacts of festival.
This research has also suggested that the cultural tourism has been increased through development of local festivals and provided greater economic and cultural benefits to the local areas. The visitors are attracted to these festivals as far as Africa and Nigeria. It was found that social and economic factors contributed to cultural tourism growth in these festivals. The Abuja carnival has become a major tourist attraction for the local, regional and international visitors.
This study highlighted in particular those areas the Abuja carnival have economic impacts on the local economy and the community. Nevertheless, only an in-depth study can help us to understand the level of economic and social impacts these festival bring to the local businesses and community in wider.

References
English Heritage (2000) Tourism Facts 2001 Swindon: English Heritage

English Tourism Board (1991) Tourism and the Environment: Maintaining the Balance English Tourist Board

English Tourism Council (2001) Time for action: a strategy for sustainable tourism in EnglandLondon: English Tourist Board [Internet] Available from< http://www.english tourism.org.uk

Getz, D. (1991) Festivals, Special Events and Tourism New York:Van Nostrand Reinhold

Getz, D. (1997). Event Management and Event Tourism. New York, Cognizant Communications Corporation

Hall, C. (1992) Hallmark Tourist Events: Impacts, Management and Planning Chichester: John Wiley and Sons Ltd

Hall, C. (1994) Tourism and Politics: Policy, Power and Place Chichester: John Wiley and Sons Ltd

International Festival Audience Research (2002) ) [Internet] Available from http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/festivals.cfm?id=International

Notting Hill Carnival (2001) [Internet] Available from
<http://www.mynottinghill.co.uk/nottinghilltv/carnival-countdown.htm