The introduction of international and national methods of assessing a festival’s economic impact

Abstract

Festivals are popular events. Their impact on the organising cities and regions is undisputed, but Hungarian economic studies have so far only focused on business-related results. In Western Europe and in the USA it has long been discovered that a festival’s impact has to be assessed in a regional context because it influences economic growth (development of tourism, infrastructure, parking spaces and human resources) and improves the living standard of the citizens in the region concerned.

In its first part, this study summarises some results of relevant international theoretical work with emphasis on the methods used to estimate the overall impact of festivals. This requires seeing festivals and festival tourism as a part of cultural city tourism in order to understand the importance and the impact of festivals on the cities concerned.

The second and main part of the study aims to introduce methods for the assessment of a festival’s economic impact, focusing on the required input data, challenges and problems encountered and possibilities of adaptation to Hungarian circumstances. There are four types of assessment methods which are used abroad for estimating a festival’s impact and which are analysed in this research. The author is confident that this type of analysis represents a new approach within the Hungarian context.