Tourism Today - College of Tourism and Hotel Management

Islam ElgammalIIFAF within the overall tourism plan of the city and provide the required resources for tourismdevelopment to satisfy future demands of potential visitors.ORGANISERS CHALLENGESFestivals organisers are faced by a number of challenges; mostly related to marketing, financialplanning and programming in order for the festival to remain viable (Carlseon et al.,2010). Developing knowledge and assessing the outcomes of the festival probably prevent anevent failure and discontinuation. IIFAF chairman asserted:“There is no economic feasibility study for the event, we don’t know how to get the greatestbenefit out of it, we don’t know how to employ the international media in promoting Ismailiaand Egypt…, we don’t have a clear plan of what should be done.”IIFAF can be beneficial socially and economically if well planned. Organisers need to betrained about the latest issues in relation to planning and managing the festival. The IIFAFTreasurer pointed out that the issues they used to face in festival sponsorships prevented anyconsideration of training to either organisers or volunteers. On the other hand, Public RelationsManager asserted that even if money is available, training options have not consideredas “important” or a “first priority”. Perhaps lack of awareness of the importance of festivalplanning, management and organisation are among the major problem in that case.A crucial aim of this piece of research was to find out reasons behind the unsustainable natureof the IIFAF festival and explore possible causes for not hosting the festival this year (2012).Respondents highlighted a number of reasons. Over half of the respondents (including theChairman and Treasurer) indicated that lack of sponsorship is the main challenge as it hasbeen difficult for organisations to support the festival financially. The Treasurer concluded,“Sponsorship tends to be problematic, we are wishing to have fixed sponsors for the festival”.The rest of respondents (including public relation manager) emphasised that the politicalsituation of the country is the cause; they indicated that securing the safety of the groupswould be a difficult task, particularly after the Egyptian revolution.ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL BENEFITSDwyer et al. (2005: 357) indicated that special events are considered one of the major generatorsof economic benefits for host destinations. They argued that since the impact of an eventon the local economy is usually greater than its impact on the hosting country, the local councilis advised to undertake an “economic impact study” before deciding whether to supporta particular event. IIFAF chairmen asserted: “I think the festival achieved its aim and provesthat Egypt is safe and able to handle such big events. Since the festival was first organised in1985, no major problems happened.”18 Tourism Today - Fall 2012 - Full Paper