Sustainable Management of Events in an Experiential Perspective

Events are complex value propositions that are realized by specialists to meet different leisure and entertainment needs. They are highly intangible and experiential-type products (Pencarelli and Forlani 2016) to which the application of logical experience is particularly suitable (Bartolazzi et al. 2008; Pegg and Patterson 2010; Manthiou et al. 2014; Getz and Page 2016). This chapter aims to describe the role played by events in the experience economy for territories involved in sustainable tourism strategies. The authors also propose a model for event impact analysis and evaluation. Starting from the idea that tourist destinations represent a stage on which tourism products can be displayed, so as to satisfy the demands of travelers seeking engaging experiences (Pencarelli and Forlani 2016), the importance of the role played by destination management in managing the events is further underlined. Tourists searching such experiences want to be in the spotlight and co-participate with territorial players in the creation of value. As such, event management requires the use of tools such as planning, organization, and control in order to design, plan, and put on a balanced program of events while monitoring the impact on value creation for both tourists and regional stakeholders within the perspective of sustainability. This chapter proposes to redefine the experiential perspective of a set of indicators that are useful in holistically evaluating the performance of events in a traditional tri-faceted dimension, i.e., economic, social, and environmental.