Event portfolio and multi-purpose development: Establishing the conceptual grounds

Planning and Leveraging Event Portfolios: Towards a Holistic Theory

“…A balanced event portfolio strategy can be sustained by the reach and frequency of events and the various target markets (i.e., local, regional, national, international) among events of different magnitudes (Ziakas & Costa, 2011a). Specifically, small-scale events can be built in a portfolio reinforcing the benefits of large-scale events and fostering the human capital that is necessary for them.…”

“…Ziakas and Costa (2011a) stressed the need for building a multi-dimensional comprehensive framework for the study of event portfolios by integrating specialized areas such as marketing, policy, leverage, and tourism-related aspects of event portfolios. Given that the literature on events derives from distinct lines of inquiry, the theoretical foundations of studying event portfolios need to be built upon an integrative framework.…”

“…Such an understanding can help event planners and host communities to build and epitomize in a portfolio the multiple realities, meanings, and layers of social order that different events represent. In this respect, the development and leveraging of an event portfolio should be pertinent to the host community's public discourse addressing salient community issues and providing, through joint strategies, opportunities for the expression of different versions of social order (Ziakas & Costa, 2011a, 2011b. In other words, the outcomes and sustainability of an event portfolio can be determined from the extent to which it fits in the host community's public discourse and socio-cultural fabric.…”

“…2007) and the Australian premier resort Gold Coast (City of Gold Coast, 2011) exemplify that the emerging portfolios of these host communities are based on their commonly accepted vision about strategically harnessing the economic and social value of events, which enables disparate events (and their stakeholders) to be brought together to achieve multiple policy purposes. Accordingly, Ziakas and Costa (2011a) argued that the common ground for building community capacity to capitalize on an event portfolio is to develop an internal logic that allows assembling events as well as facilitating inter-organizational collaboration among different event stakeholders. Moreover, Ziakas and Costa (2011b) noted that strategic planning is required to prevent the inherent risks of events' relatedness such as exhausting local resources, hosting monotonously repetitive event elements or exceeding demand for events.…”

“…From this standpoint, it is imperative to reconsider the common focus on single events and purposes that they serve and draw attention to multiple events and purposes that can enable cross-leveraging by fostering synergies among different events and their stakeholders in pursuit of attainment and magnification of specific ends (Ziakas & Costa, 2011a). To do so, the development of an event portfolio capable of reaching a wide range of audiences (Chalip, 2004;Getz, 2008) and serving multiple purposes (Ziakas, 2013) constitutes a fruitful strategy for attaining the sustainability of event benefits and optimal use of resources in the provision that each event in the portfolio complements or reinforces the benefits bestowed by other events (Ziakas & Costa, 2011b).…”