International Arts Festivals Visitors＇ Motives and Profile Characteristics： The Case of Two Medium-Sized Greek Cities

This paper presents an analysis of two renowned international arts festivals visitors＇ motives and profilecharacteristics, in two medium-sized Greek cities： the Kalamata International Dance Festival （KIDF） and theDrama International Short Film Festival （DISFF）. The purpose of the study was to determine the reasons visitorsattend these festivals, which is necessary for building more concise marketing strategies and, therefore,more successful and sustainable events, with long-term benefits, ranging from the local to the national levels.The research addresses international arts festivals that share four main characteristics： （1） they host internationalprofessional artists; （2） they feature explicitly-stated artistic visions and objectives; （3） they are publicly funded;and （4） they have achieved a consecutive 23 years of successful presence in each city. These two case studiesrepresent two cultural events which have managed to maintain their popularity and high status, on the Europeanfestival map, as well as to raise their host cities＇ cultural and tourism standards, despite the serious economiccutback they have both faced. Due to limited available funds, the festivals lack marketing resources andspecifically data collection on visitor motivation, a gap which this study aims to remedy. Primary datawere collected with the aid of online structured questionnaires, distributed and collected during autumn2016. Altogether, 130 questionnaires were answered by visitors of the DISFF and 186 questionnaires wereanswered by visitors of the KIDF. Even though both festivals share similar characteristics regarding theirorganization and their aims, our analysis emphasized the heterogeneity of the motives of attendance in connectionwith the visitors＇ profile characteristics, for each event. While some similarities were found, especially betweendemographic sample characteristics and visitors＇ profiles, the general picture to emerge from the findingsindicates significant differences between the two cases. Arts festivals-goers do not appear to constitute a singlehomogeneous market; rather, each event appears to attract different audiences for different reasons. Theimplications of these findings, deriving from statistical analysis, are discussed and suggestions for further researchare outlined. This research aims to contribute to knowledge concerning the marketing strategies of internationalarts festivals in medium-sized cities, useful for research and academic purposes, as well as to local and nationalauthorities and other agencies and bodies, responsible for urban tourism and cultural city/town planning andmanagement.