Benefits of festivals to destinasyon marketing: Case of 10th International Pistachio Festival of Culture and Art

In the world and in Turkey increasing importance given to tourism, the emergence of various tourism trend has helped draw attention to new places and new types of tourism. Event tourism has recently been used as a strong demand-building tool, and has made significant contributions to the travel and hospitality industries. However, with the realization of the value of tourism in the local, regional, national and international sense, where tourism is not developed or underdeveloped, festivals in the scope of event tourism as an important tool in the development of tourism and the region are used. In this study; how the festival participants evaluated the benefits of the festivals to destination marketing and whether or not this evaluation differed according to demographic variables. In this context, data were collected from 417 festival participants by survey method between 19.08.2017-20.08.2017, exploratory factor analysis was applied to these data and a two-dimensional structure was obtained.Then, confirmatory factor analysis was performed and it was determined that the scale had acceptable compliance values. After that, independent samples t-test and one-way (ANOVA) analysis of variance were performed to determine whether there was any difference between the benefits of the festivals on destination marketing and demographic characteristics. As a result of the research; It was determined that the average of evaluating the benefits of the participants on the destination marketing of the festivals was very high and this evaluation showed differences according to the demographic variables.