Factors of Demand for Cultural Events in Tourism: the Case of the Czech Republic

Abstract

The main purpose of the research is to examine selected demand factors for cultural events in tourism in the Czech Republic. Eight hypotheses are formulated. The primary research was carried out in the form of a questionnaire. There were 1666 respondents interviewed in various tourist destinations in the Czech Republic. While testing the hypotheses the Friedman test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, the Mann-Whitney U test, and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient are used. We confirm the hypotheses that the residents of the Czech Republic think that cultural events are organized more frequently than sports events, shopping events (e.g. markets, trades), exhibitions and fairs, and religious events in the Czech Republic, the motives for participation in cultural events are mainly experience and entertainment, women more often participate in cultural events than men, men more often attend sports events than women, and people take the greatest pleasure to participate in cultural events and not in the other events (sports events, shopping events, exhibitions and fairs, and religious events). We reject the hypotheses that summer is the best season for organizing events, that families are more likely to participate in cultural events than single people or people with friends, and that advertising in mass media has the greatest influence on the decision to visit cultural events. The benefit of the paper is to focus the research on a new area of tourism development in the Czech Republic – organizing events at tourist destinations and trying to reveal the impact of various factors on demand for cultural events. Organization of events in tourism is a relatively large area, therefore, it opens further possibilities of exploring this issue in terms of the organized events' impact on tourist destinations, the offering of organized events, managing organized events. Keywords: cultural events, exhibitions, fairs, Friedman test, Mann-Whitney U test, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, shopping events, sports events, Wilcoxon signed-rank test.