Hallmark Event Essay

Introduction

Events are a significant tourism promoter, and contribute largely in the success of marketing agendas of many destinations around the world. The impacts and roles of regularly planned events in the context of tourism management have been quite discussed in literature and are of gaining significance for the competitiveness of the destination (Getz, 2010). Still, it was merely a few years ago that event tourism developed in the industry of tourism as well as in the research circle, so that resulting development of this area can be explained as remarkable. An important term in the event tourism is Hallmark Event that has several meanings. According to Ritchie, as stated by Getz (2008), in his publication in 1984 referred big or repeating events of a certain time frame are basically created to improve the profitability, attraction and awareness of a destination. Getz (2008) employed the terminology in a way more particularly linked to image building, destination branding and place marketing: he described hallmark as an event which have such importance with regard to tradition, quality, appeal, or popularity that the event offers the host place, destination or community with a competitive edge (Getz, 2008).

Analysis of the Statement through an Example of Hallmark Event

Several tourism destinations feature local cultural or traditional events as their hallmark shows, whereas others go for edgy attraction with contemporary cultural events like popular music carnivals, dance festivals etc. Melbourne, Australia is one of the leading events destinations around the globe and the city promotes several cultural and traditional events as its hallmark events (Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, 2017). One of them is Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.  The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival brought to the public by Bank of Melbourne has been Australia’s most pre-eminent carnival of food and wine. The event appeals over a quarter of million food and wine fanatics from around the world. The festival takes place during March every year and expands on 10 days of celebrations (Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, 2017). The event offers new experiences for the travellers throughout Melbourne and Victoria. It brings internationally popular food and wine flairs who offer exclusive and unique events for the national and international people visiting Victoria. The event is uniquely positioned to display the strengths of the city and the state whereas simultaneously creating concepts for the future. This internationally acclaimed festival also promotes local and global chefs and offers an opportunity to them to feel the host community taste and food culture (Richards and Wilson, 2004). The festival supports and nurtures the individuality and uniqueness of Melbourne through displaying its outstanding food productions, culinary skills and dynamics of excellent foodie region, along with launching international trends and global presenters. Every year, the event creates its plan to assure it offers memorable experiences with over 300 events including World’s Longest Lunch, Master Class and River Graze. A Public Relation Campaign is also used to promote the festival towards a broader audience through a comprehensive five months regional, national, global marketing and public relation campaigns. It involves media associates to increase the profile of the event and elaborate the campaign reach.  (Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, 2017). The event involves the audience throughout the year through industry and consumer electronic news and social media networks. It has over 60,000 subscribers with more than 170,000 social media followers. This signifies a high impact of brand positioning and marketing throughout different mediums of marketing including outdoor marketing, digital channels, press, magazine, television as well as an increasing focus on digital and social media networks (Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, 2017).

This concept of hallmark event rests on basic principles of branding and quality used in events and tourism literature majorly relates to roles or function, not to theme, form, ownership or size (Getz and Page, 2016). It is being argued that the destined position of hallmark events needs periodicity and permanence, as events that takes place only for once cannot acquire all the related objectives. Thus, hallmark events related to the feature of events in acquiring a combination of objective that benefit host community, and tourism. The Melbourne Food & Wine Festival has been appealing tourists, making and improving a positive perception that is linked with the brand destination that has been offering several benefits to the citizens of the region. The traditions of the event in Australia and around the world create a stronger feeling of place and community identity as the destination becomes inseparably connected (Getz et al., 2012).  

Hallmark events persist within the context of groups with special interest and social communities as symbolic tourist attraction that offers the place an identity. An important result objective cannot be acquired without proper marketing and management, so such events need to be managed professionally (Getz et al., 2012). As in Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, event managers observe all critical projects to ensure a successful and lively event for the people. The organizers of the event supervise Food Safety Standards, Victorian Fire Service, Code Red Policy, Liquor Licensing regulations along with other relevant local, state and Commonwealth laws (Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, 2015). Their structure and ownership is quite significant as the people have to sense their belonging in the event. 

At Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, the reality of the place’s world-class wine and food is offered which becomes a huge prospect for the destination management. (John o’Sullivan, 2014). According to a model proposed by Jago (Getz et al., 2012) event planning and assessing its contribution can be helpful in creating brand reputation which helps in DOM. It suggests six factors of a successful and impactful event that can create benefits for the brand and destination management. For example, the effectiveness of hallmark event is mostly dependent on the support of the local people since event sponsorship is normally led by local community. At Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, it reinforce the idea that food, wine and its celebration is a component of their society which brings them together as a shared lifestyle and it offers a way to acquire their support, time and engagement (John o’Sullivan, 2014). It offers a feeling of happiness among the local residents and robust economic outcomes for the destination management and business are gained as the local people are the biggest supporters of the event which helps in destination branding.

Similarly, the event has strategic and cultural match with the destination. It depicts the values, the tradition and love for the food of the Australian people to the world. In addition to this, the event aim to shift the perception of the country’s food and wine tradition beyond the stereotypical concepts and share it with the whole world with innovation, passion and creative culinary experience (John o’Sullivan, 2014). Other important aspect is differentiation which refers the branding event to be unique from others (Jayswal, 2008). At the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, the aim is to make people acknowledged of the unique, premium quality food and wine that the country has to offer. This enables the event to develop a positioning for the national food and wine and to support the tourism marketing while tapping into the international trend of food and wine Melbourne Food & Wine Festival hosts over 200 separate events throughout 17-20 days, which becomes a treat for the people’ emotions (Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, 2015). The festival brings together global names such as Angel Leon, Spain along with three Michelin awarded Christopher Kostow from The Restaurant at Meadowood, St. Helena, United States along with many local chefs like Ada D’Sylva, Jacques Reymond, Stefano de Pieri etc (John o’Sullivan, 2014). 

A regular event is considered to offer branding advantages because of the fact that it has traditional value that support the branding impact by participating profile and saliency. In Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, a vibrant mix of its native culture with immigrants from throughout the globe creates a melting point of traditional values which is depicted through the celebration of various flavors. Therefore, while a festival might occur once a year at a place it may present perks to the destination’s branding with the tradition and profile it delivers. Moreover, the event also delivers an important contribution towards the DOM as it is hosted at the same spot continuously each year since 25 years. That is the major reason of it as a hallmark event of the country.

Moreover, for a hallmark event to be strategic and long enough to be a part of the destination branding, the event should be financially sustainable. In the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, every sponsor is adequately attracted to participate in the event to make it huge and impactful (Johansson, 2007). Also, regardless of the host community size, the integration between destination marketing and management is vital for the event that makes it an optimum contribution towards DOM. Coordinated and cooperative planning takes place between key elements like event managers, destination marketers, as well as the state event organization which enables the event to be successful destination branding activity. it also adheres to the fact that when it comes to the reputation of Australia being a popular destination for food and wine lovers from around the world, the festival aims to boost finest products with most distinct culinary talents about which the world is still unaware (John o’Sullivan, 2014). This has also become a strong for the marketers to use and boost their campaign.

Certainty, a huge event creates a much higher amount of media exposure as compared to a smaller one. For the media coverage, the event campaign includes PR, advertising through digital and conventional mediums, content marketing, and social media marketing which targets to benefits the Australian tourism and DOM (John o’Sullivan, 2014). The Melbourne Food & Wine Festival promotes its investment in the Australian food and wine popularity can only advantage everyone (Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, 2015). For example, the tourism industry of Australia is going to benefit much from the festival’s tourists and travellers from around the world to enjoy the exception and unique presentation of food and wine collection. Not only tourists, but local farmers, chefs and restaurant owners would like to be a part of the festival’s promotion. Related aspects that may improve the impact of events on DOM, is creating the festival beyond phase to capitalize on destination tourism for a longer period of time. For instance, Melbourne Food & Wine Festival has the destination’s name combined with the genre of the festival. Creating events encompassing community norms, assuring a better match with local perception, assuring that event messages and signage are in line with the destination’s various efforts to promote itself to the target markets creates an event a successful branding activity (Johansson, 2007). Destination management is mostly vague regarding what they wish to acquire from events with regard to the destination. When events are efficiently and adequately integrated into a destination branding plan, it requires a clear motive for the methods that the event matches into the integrated marketing communication campaign for the place (Getz, 2012).

Conclusion

This essay has explained the given statement about Hallmark Event’s effectiveness towards building a better destination branding and management with the help of one example of hallmark event, the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. The concepts discussed in this essay have been in context with tourism destination and its branding activities. In today’s competitive era, a brand differentiates a service, a product or a place which is essential for the organizations or countries to remain economically stable in the global marketplace. Because of increasing marketing similarities, the significance of possessing a brand identity is vital as this is assumed to be challenging to copy and offer a differentiation aspect to the brand.  Through using a model to present the factors of an effective event and how it benefits to the DOM, it has been analyzed that destination managers looking to develop the tourism prospect should be committed towards the stakeholders present in the destination’s branding procedure. By working cohesively as a marketing group, hallmark events like Melbourne Food & Wine Festival can seek to impact the destination’s brand and positioning, supporting the development activities, research and assessment plans, all to reinforce the cause of periodic events and the tourism sector.