Strategic Event Planning for the Florida Music Festival (FMF), USA
Abstract
With the aid of the guided analysis of the Florida Music Festival (FMF), this case study outlines the use of the strategic event planning process with a view to establish events as a tourist attraction within a destination. The paper explains the importance of the tourism industry for Orlando, USA and sets out ways in which events can capture this market by means of carefully crafted strategies in order to generate event tourism. The Florida Music Festival has been in existence for 15 years, but it has not grown beyond a residentially attended event. This is a problem that appears to stem from (1) this event’s inability to increase the return on investment for stakeholders, (2) an inadequate understanding of the current visitor profile, and (3) the inability of the event to grow the attendance reach beyond that of local residents.