Enhancing the tourist experience through innovation : a case study on events

Abstract

Events can be used as a measure to enhance the experience a tourist gets when visiting Malta. This study sets out to find how innovation can be used by organisers to enhance the tourist experience through the use of events. Consequently, three questions have been put forward: (i) identifying the key elements make events being organised in Malta successful in attracting an international audience; (ii) how local events such as village feasts, local council village festivals and similar events can successfully attract an international market and finally (iii) to show how events can be used to enhance Malta's tourism product offer through innovation. During the study to help facilitate in answering the other questions, issues such as marketing events, funding, impacts of events and the strengths and weaknesses of Malta as a destination have also been tackled. These emerging issues were tackled using a series of interviews with five key individuals involved in organising popular events in Malta. The participants identified various innovative techniques namely; promoting Malta as a destination through events, promoting Malta as a destination with a lot of diversity, promoting Malta's unique selling points and using its size as an advantage. Nonetheless, it was observed that they do not perceive this to be innovation as such as their perception of innovation is still something new and original. The positive impacts of events resulted to be a good exposure for Malta abroad and of great benefit for the respective localities and the economy. The negative impacts are viewed as minimal and more awareness should be raised on them in order to improve the overall impact of such events. Smaller local events were found to be an important contributor to the overall tourist experience as the tourist seeks something traditional and authentic while in Malta.