EVALUATING THE 'SPECIALNESS' OF EVENT TOURISTS WITH
MOBILE POSITIONING DATASETS
Laura ALTIN & Rein AHAS
University of Tartu, Estonia, laura.altin@ut.ee & rein.ahas@ut.ee
Importance of events in tourism has increased in recent decades. Recent studies
have mostly focused on aspects of marketing, analyzing the impact on one particular
special event (e.g. Olympic Games, FIFA world cup). General events like concerts of
one artist are rarely investigated (Getz 2005, Moravcik 2013). Earlier studies have
shown that events with low place attachment (as concerts of megastars are) attract
more and more tourists, though main target group is locals (Allen et al 2008; Getz
2005, Quinn 2013).
The aim of this paper is to evaluate how differently behave visitors of concerts of
megastars compared to regular tourists and visitors to other events. Passive mobile
positioning data has been used to analyze behavior of foreign visitors in Estonia
during 8-year-long period (2006-2013).
This paper provides new information about events’ visitors: character of general
events (concerts of megastars) and their difference from other events (festivals,
celebrations, cultural celebrations, traditional celebrations). The results show that
megastar concert visitors tend to generate tourism from nearby countries (Latvia,
Finland) while traditional Estonian events are also attractive for tourists from distant
countries. Duration of visits also tend to be longer in megastar concert visitors than
other segments under investigation. Organizing concerts in Tallinn helps to attract
new segments of tourists.