Theatre festival as a tourist attraction: a case study of Almagro International Classical Theatre Festival, Spain

Abstract

Purpose Researchers have become aware of the importance of festivals as a phenomenon worthy of studying, but in-depth studies of cultural festivals are lacking. The purpose of this study is to describe the attributes of cultural festivals, specifically theatre festivals and examine the motivations to organise them. Similarly, this study seeks to discover the type of tourist that attends these types of festivals. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was applied to a representative sample of tourists who visited one of the most prestigious festivals in the international panorama: Almagro International Festival of Classical Theatre. A non-probabilistic technical sample was used. Tabulation of the data was performed by the study group using the SPSS, v. 23. Findings This study makes a segmentation of the tourists who attend the festival based on their motivations. Using this segmentation, the authors analyse the socio-demographic characteristics and tourists’ behaviour, as well as their experience at the festival. Amongst the higher-rated attributes of the festival are care and service organisation and interpretative quality of the actors and/or theatre company. Research limitations/implications The main practical application of this study is to help understand the peculiarities of each segment of visitors and their evaluation of the destination to create tourist and cultural products that provide greater satisfaction with respect to their needs. Originality/value The main value is the novelty of studying this kind of cultural event. The authors analyse the reasons to visit it in relation to the motivations that move the visitors. The authors also study the assessment the tourist does of the qualities of the festival.