Worldwide, national governments and local authorities are increasingly using festivals and special events as key elements within regional development strategies. While income earning per se is generally considered to be a major driver, linked to tourism-promotion objectives, festivals also stimulate the creative economy by serving as distribution platforms for new ideas and products and as venues for networking among creative workers. They have notable spillover effects, not only by employing people in the cultural professions and raising awareness and consumption of the arts locally, but also through increased earnings in the hospitality sector, etc. (CER 2013). Festivals and special events are widely acknowledged to make an important contribution to the economic development of their local areas, as they provide opportunities for tourism promotion, commercial outcomes and increased inward investment in host regions (Getz 2007 [12] ; Van de Wagen 2005 [13] ), contribute to the extension of the tourism season (Huang et al. 2010 [14] ) and help recreate the image of a place. Small scale local events usually require minimal capital development and thus, have the potential of generating substantial returns on small financial investments (Gursoy et al. 2004 [15] ). Moreover, successful events can change the perception of places and the sense of being in and belonging to a community. As a result, cities and regions worldwide widely apply festival branding, due to the growing importance of cultural industries within the contemporary economy, for visitors, as well as for the local population (Kavaratzis and Ashworth, 2010:5 [16] ).
Festivals range from mega, hallmark, key and regional/local events: mega-events are designed to reach a global audience and thus make a positive impact upon the national economy of the host country, whereas community events are primarily designed to deliver benefits to local stakeholders. Another festival typology introduced by O’Sullivan and Jackson (2002:331) [17] identified three types of festivals: from the small scale, rural or semi-rural ‘home-grown’ festival, to the medium size, urban ‘tourist-tempter’ festival, up to the large, urban ‘big-bang’ festival promoting numerous related activities over a large geographical area.
[12] Getz, D. (2007), Event studies: Theory, research and policy for planned events, Oxford, UK: Elsevier.
[13] Van de Wagen L (2005) Event management: For tourism, cultural, business and sporting events, (2nd ed.), Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Education Australia
[14] Huang JZ, Li M, Cai LA (2010) A model of community-based festival image. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 29:254–260
[15] Gursoy D, Kim K, Uysal M (2004) Perceived impacts of festivals and special events by organizers: an extension and validation. Tourism Management, 25:171-181
[16] Kavaratzis, M. and Ashworth, G. (2010), “Place branding: where do we stand?”, in Ashworth, G. and Kavaratzis, M. (Eds), Towards Effective Place Brand Management. Branding European Cities and Regions, UK: Edward Elgar, pp. 1-14.
[17] O’Sullivan D, Jackson M (2002) Festival tourism: A contributor to sustainable local economic development? Journal of Sustainable Tourism 10:325–342