Impacts in festival and events management

1. Introduction

The purpose of paper is to analyze the impacts of festival and events and the way they have been measured. It will begin by an analysis of the most important impacts that events take, specially taking into account example of Olympic Games, as well as thet implications for bidders, organisers and residents of the host city. This analysis will be followed by a chronologicalfocus on these impacts in all the stages of the events, as well as a comparation of different methods used to measure these impacts and purpose of the authors. In the last section, a conclusion will be carried out, highlighting the opinion of the researcher and limitations found through the paper.

2. Impact themes

According to Malfas, Theodoraki and Houlihan (2004), the impacts of anevent depend on how big and what repercussions have the event for the host city, country or biddies. Festivals and events are increasing more and more as same as their impacts, which are being taken more and more into account as time goes by. (Langen and García, 2009). One of the most relevant impacts, both positive and negative, are economic, social, environmental and technological.Economic impacts

According to Westerbeek, Smith, Turner, Emery, Green, Van Leeuwen (2005), economic impacts are assessed in terms of two components: direct and indirect impacts. Direct impacts are referred to any spending straight linked to the event such as the money spent by visitors on tickets, food, accommodation, entertainment, shopping or transport as well as other direct expendituresrelated to participants, organisers and sponsors. (Westerbeek et al, 2005), However, indirect economic impacts are the share of visitors' spending that purchases goods and services (Matthewman, Kamel and Bearne, 2009.)

Matthewman et al (2009), reveals that the huge investment to support big events, such as Olympic Games, has an important force on economic growth. In new infrastructures, Chinainvested $40 billion to transform the city of Beijing, increasing quality of indirect aspects for instance advertising, television, Internet, mobile phone, etc of China.

Another example of positive economic impacts are the improvement of transport in Athens (airport, tram, underground and a toll motorway encirgling the city), which is still in use after seven years. (Matthewman et al, 2009)As far as negative impacts, Kasimati and Dawson (2008) states that, although events with such a magnitude as Olympic Games tend to affect in a positive way to the economy of the host city, there are also cases which occur the opposite, like in Sydney 2000 where did not compensate for all the money invest in infraestructures and some problem of delays in the constructions.

Socialimpacts

According to (Theodoraki (2009) increasing big events can make a significant social anc cultural contribution to the quality of life of both the individual and community.

The case of Barcelona is one of the clearest examples of cultural impacts in any event, which the urban development process is still increasing. (Malfas et al, 2009). According to Brunet i Cid (2002), Barcelonais a different city since the Olympic Games were held. The organisation was very optimum and that was reflected in local people whose pride was increased (Brunet i Cid, 2002).

Negative aspects might also affect to community as during the event, traffic, pollution, crowding or noise increases (Westerbeek, 2005). These negative impacts are measured through social impacts assessments, analysingbehaviour, interests or health of locals, which examines the consequences of the event on the residents and organisations (Westerbeek, 2005).

Environmental aspects

Environmental impacts can be devastating for a host city like it happened in the Winter Olympic Games in Albertville (Christine, 1992). In Olympic Games, it is needed much use of energy such as air, ince, water,...