Strategic planning of organizations on tourism events : a case of Johor

As tourism is one of the fastest growing industries today, thus within the tourism industry events are getting more and more important. People have become more interested in events of all kinds, and will travel far away to participate in events that they find interesting. Events can offer various economic and social benefits for destinations, and therefore destination managers can and should employ events effectively in a tourism role. It has become widely accepted that every community and destination needs to adopt a long-term, strategic approach to event tourism thereby planning and development in order to realize the full tourism potential of events. This study is as a response to the lack of studies on how event tourism strategies are actually used in destinations. The study was directed to Johor tourism organizations, and the aim was to explore how these organizations work strategically with events. The main findings of the study indicate that although tourism organizations have increasingly realized the potential and importance of events, the extent to which events are used strategically in tourism organizations varies. Some tourism organizations have integrated events deep into their overall tourism strategies, and events form their own business area and have their own business strategy. In other cases events are included in the overall tourism strategies, however, the work with events is rather haphazard and other business areas are prioritized. At the end of the study a model that describes how event tourism strategy development in tourism organizations can be seen to follow certain stages is developed