It's been a while...

So it's been a while since I posted, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about events and tourism!

First off, a friend of mine was in town a few weekends back with her boyfriend, who had never visited New York. Saturday was my turn to play tour guide, and he requested to grab pizza in Little Italy for lunch. I had completely forgotten that the Feast of San Genaro was still going on. Unfortuantely, it was raining this Saturday afternoon. Fortunately, the bad weather showed me how poorly laided out the traffic plan for this festival was! We had 1 large umbrella for 3 people, and were surrounded by people with other umbrellas. With the streets already narrowed by booths of vendors on both sides, there was barely 1 standard sized traffic lane in the middle for human traffic. Add hundreds of people and hundreds of umbrellas, and it was a complete jamming mess. The traffic way turned into a giant clogged and drippy mess. We eventually jumped out at the first opportunity we could and walked into the next available pizza place, not caring about the name or price. I'm shocked that they are allowed to have that many people in such a small space without a better traffic plan! All it takes is a rain storm to create chaos!

The presentation in class by Type Social gave me the insight of creating a real specialization and strategic strength for an events planning company. With their heavy background in night life promotions and guest lists, Type Social is a different kind of event company that not only plans events, but also invites people to them. In most cases, as the client wants sales as a result of the event, this means acting indirectly as a sales agent. I wonder how much pressure the guests in Type Social's database feel when attending an event. Do they realize that they're invited as a targeted buyer? I also thought about extending this guest list specialization to tourism. Could an event planning company successfully plan an event at a destination, then use it's guest list to get numerous visitors to travel just for that event. Meeting and conference planners do it all the time. But what if the organizers of India at 60 obtained a guest list while here in New York, and now were throwing events in India for tourism or corporate clients. Could they pursuade guests from New York at attend?

Last weekend, I also attended the New York Leather Festival with my boyfriend. Not much of a festival, and therein lies the room for all the critique on this blog! It was located on a small 1 block street in the West Village that had been closed down. It was $5 to gain access (procedes to charity), though with the way the wooden horses were blocking the street and the lack of staff to man the enterance, one could easily get in without paying. There were a number of lackluster vendors with leather gear and some organizations set up with information. It was dead and boring. There was no experience, no wow. For a leather festival, almost everyone was dressed in regular street clothes. We left and went to the park, returning about 2 hours later. By then, there were more people, which made it more interesting. It was then that I realized the pure value and entertainment of this street fair was in the people attending it, not in the festival, its infastructure, vendors, or any organizated entertainment. Suddenly it became fun as we were talking about other attendees: what they were wearing and what they were doing (all clearly more exciting than us, so we must have bored them). The festival then tried to bring it up a notch with a man demonstrating how to crack a whip. However, this wasn't interesting or entertaining at all for me. Maybe my reasons for attending the festival (just for the unique experience, more focused on people and the "out of the ordinary") were completely different than those of other attendees (to see the whip demonstration, or buy new leather gear, or join organizations). This got me thinking about the diversity of reasons that people attend festivals, and the needs to both target specific niches and cater to an overall crowd at the same time.

We've finished our group project by now. I think my study of the Foxwoods Food and Wine Festival showed me how a tourism attraction can use an event to attract new crowds to it. For the Foxwoods festival, they accomplish this by highlighting other aspects of their destination that visitors might not normally think of when visiting Foxwoods. This makes the destination look more attractive overall, and improves business/visits overall. It's been a valuable lesson to learn!