Edinburgh Napier University

  The ‘festival city’ has become a topic of theoretical debate within tourism and events research. In strategic destination management practice a festival city presents a significant and sustained portfolio of planned festivals and events as a means of contributing to its economic and cultural viability as a tourism destination (Getz & Page, 2016). The festival city designation has thus become associated with contemporary destination branding approaches (Todd & Logan-McFarlane, 2017); and strategic event portfolio management in tourism destinations (Getz & Page, 2016).
The setting of my presentation is Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh, which has become officially branded by its destination management stakeholders as “the world’s leading 'festival city'” (BOP Consulting & Festivals Edinburgh International, 2015, p. 10). Edinburgh earned its festival city title by relatively organic means rather than directed strategic effort (Ind & Todd, 2011) and has more than 70 years’ history of festival provision. In the early 1940s, civic and cultural stakeholders’ intention of creating Edinburgh’s first international arts festival was to present the city as the post-World War II “cultural resort of Europe” (Bartie, 2013, p. 23). Since the 1947 origination of its first arts festivals, present-day Edinburgh hosts eleven internationally recognised festivals and numerous events. These contribute more than 4.5 million attendances of visitors and tourists to the city annually (BOP Consulting & Festivals Edinburgh International, 2016).
Destination managers, and event planners are increasingly adopting strategic portfolio approaches to drive event tourism and gain competitive advantage (Getz, Svensson, Peterssen & Gunnervall, 2012). In doing so, they are seeking to develop festivals and events as products to attract tourists and other visitors. Hallmark events are “defined by: longevity; quality of brand image; significance; and value” (Todd, Leask & Ensor, 2017, p.495). Such events are recognised as being valuable additions to destinations’ event portfolios. Hallmark events may be planned and designed by managers. Nevertheless, they will only gain this status over time and by becoming associated with their host destination (Getz & Page, 2016). The hallmark designation is thus often the result of organic rather than strategic development (Todd et al., 2017).
My presentation will discuss Edinburgh as a festival city and the features of hallmark event tourism in this setting. I will draw from the context of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (The Fringe) and its stakeholders as an example of hallmark event tourism in practice (Todd, et al., 2017). Today, the Fringe is the world’s largest multi-arts festival and accounts for more than half of Edinburgh’s annual visitors (BOP Consulting and Festivals Edinburgh International, 2016). The 2018 Fringe involved 53,232 performances of 3,548 shows in 317 venues and more than 2.9 million tickets were issued (Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 2108). The Fringe has become synonymous with Edinburgh and a hallmark event. It was not planned by cultural, civic or tourism stakeholders but rather, developed as a non-curated festival, and retains its open-access status. My presentation will conclude by reflecting upon what can be learned from this exemplar of hallmark even tourism in a festival city.
Key words: festival city, hallmark event tourism, Edinburgh