Festivals within the context of event tourism and a research about social impacts of Antalya Altın Portakal Film Festival on residents

Event tourism, examined as a concept of special interest tourism, has gained importance rapidly in last two decades due to the great developments in events and to the financial earnings created by them. Though they have huge differences in variety and hardnesses to make classifications, events would be more nested with tourism in near future than ever owing to both economic and the social dimensions.Festivals as a type of event tourism which possess sociologically the most realistic, historical, cultural relations with the place where they take place and which do not consider economic profits in the first rank were selected as the theme of this research. At this point, the most vital balance is not to sacrifice the values and celebration themes of the community in which the festival was born for the sake of the attraction of economic profits. If a festival is in the mentioned way, it will disappear anyway in near future or else it will last a limited life in the way of popular consommation by losing its social roots.The ones who observe the balance between development and not losing the roots would undoubtedly be the residents. Thus, through consulting the residents, the aspects of a forty-seven year old tradition that need to be corrected and improved in order to be sustained in a balance were adressed to reveal.As a consequence of the statistical analysis six social impact dimensions and five distinct clusters possessing diverse perceptions about these dimensions were identified. The items causing these different perceptions were determined in detail by the post hoc tests in the appendices. In addition, residents were asked to state their opinions through open-ended questions in the questionnaire and their expectations and perceptions were handled separately.Analysis findings and some cases from the literature bring about some recommendations for the festivals which will be held in near future. For instance, the lack of volunteered labour is one of the considerable findings. Because, in the cases examined in the literature and in the responses of residents; volunteerism was frequently associated with great importance thanks to its contributions for organization and social cohesion.