CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Event management is an exciting and growing industry, as well as a unique career
opportunity for everyone with a passion for the planning and organizing of events, such as
concerts, conventions, parties, weddings, and other gatherings. Ramsborg, (2008). In addition,
Burns, (2010) documented that event management include planning and organization, such as
concerts, conventions, parties, weddings, and other gatherings, is an exciting and expanding
sector with a unique career opportunity for anyone with a passion for creating and managing
events. Companies of all sizes consider event management to be one of their most significant
marketing and communication strategies. Companies arrange promotional events to help them
communicate with clients and potential prospects, from product debuts to press conferences. The
tone and atmosphere of an event can be influenced by a variety of factors, including music, live
entertainment, and even the location itself.
Further, Chen, Sloan, and Legrand (2009), also refer to it as the application of project
management to the creation and development of large scale events such as festivals, conferences,
ceremonies, formal parties, concerts, or conventions. It involves studying the brand, identifying
the target audience, devising the event concept, planning the logistics and coordinating the
technical aspects before actually launching the event. The process of planning and co-ordinating
the event is usually referred to as event planning and can include budgeting, scheduling, site
selection, acquiring necessary permits, coordinating transportation and parking, arranging for
speakers or entertainers, arranging decor, event security, catering and emergency plans. The
events industry now includes events of all sizes from the Olympics down to business breakfast
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meetings. Many industries, charitable organizations, and interest groups hold events in order to
market themselves, build business relationships, raise money or celebrate achievement. More so,
Chen, Sloan, and Legrand (2009), echoed that event planners can use the news media to target
their audience in the hopes of generating media coverage that reaches hundreds of millions of
people. They can also invite their target audience to their events and communicate with them
throughout the event.
The events industry currently encompasses events of all sizes, from the Olympics to business
breakfast meetings, shows etc. Many companies, philanthropic organizations, and interest groups
arrange events to promote themselves, create commercial contacts, generate funds, or
commemorate accomplishments. Because of technological breakthroughs, the hospitality
business is changing at a quick pace, requiring future workers to be technologically proficient
while conserving natural resources to ensure our environment's sustainability. To stay relevant,
leisure experts will have to meet and surpass the expectations of a growing audience, as well as
satisfy their ever-changing demands. Future executives must be able to assess and recognize
present trends in order to predict future consumer behavior through research while remaining
ethical in order to protect the industry's credibility. The hospitality industry is changing at a rapid
rate due to technological advancements that will require future professionals to be skilled in
technology while conserving natural resources to sustain our environment. Leisure professionals
will need to exceed guest expectations from a growing clientele and accommodate their everchanging needs to stay relevant. Future leaders must be able to analyze and identify current
trends to understand future consumer behavior by conducting research while maintaining ethical
behavior to uphold integrity within the industry.
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1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Before you begin any kind of planning or assessment, it is important to determine risk to decide
on what potential disruptions to concentrate what are usually limited resources. It's not possible
to be prepared for every possible disruption; you have to concentrate on what is most likely to
occur. This universally accepted risk management equation will help with this effort:
Risk = Probability + Consequence
Probability, quite logically, refers to the likelihood of something happening, while consequence
refers to its impact. For example, the probability of a meteorite hitting your event facility is
likely quite small, although the consequences from such an event would be huge. The risks on
which you want to concentrate are those in which both the likelihood of occurrence and the
potential consequences are in the medium to high range. Keep this in mind as you go through the
emergency management process. Most of all, keep things in perspective. Any consequence that
involves potential critical injury or loss of life must take precedence over less critical outcomes.
It's important, therefore, to prioritize the risks as well as identifying the ones to focus on.
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
This study generally aims to assess the challenges of event management as a new trend in the
hospitality industry in order to provide recommendations for the improvement of the events.
However, the specific objectives of the study are:
i.
To identify the challenges faced by event management in Naval, Biliran hospitality
industries in terms of postponing/canceling events, lower conversion rates from online
events, difficulties with zoom and alternatives; and temporary struggle to find venues
that can guarantee dates etc.
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ii.
To investigate on how this challenges affects the hospitality industry and its growth
within the economy.
iii.
To identify all the possible means by which the challenges faced in event management
can be overcome or reduce.
iv.
To address the issues of security and terrorism as it is one of the challenges of event
management in our country Nigeria to the hospitality industries.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
For a better understanding and comprehension of this research work the researcher went on
asking some important question which formed the research question for this study, which will be
addressed and answered, questions are:
1.
What are the challenges faced by event management in Nigeria hospitality industries?
2.
Do you think that the challenges faced by the industry affect the hospitality industry and
its growth within the economy?
3.
What is you recommendation on how this challenges faced in event management can be
overcome or reduce?
4.
Is there security threat and terrorism challenges within your place of management and
event centers?
1.5 RESEARCH HYPOTHESES
The research aims to provide conclusions that would either reject or accept the following
alternative or null hypothesis: Alternative (Ha):
(H0):
There is no significant relationship between the challenges of event management and the
growth and success of events management in the hospitality industry.
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H1:
There is a significant relationship between the challenges of event management and the
growth and success of events management in the hospitality industry.
1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The hospitality industry generates substantial direct and indirect revenues for local and
regional economies. Directly, is when consumers spend money to receive value in
accommodations, F&B, and entertainment. Indirectly, is when these businesses purchase goods
and services from other suppliers and retailers. Hospitality sector currently accounts for over
11% of global GDP. The greatest perceived socio-economic impacts of the hospitality sector are
increased employment, improved living standards, greater tax revenues to State and local
governments, and growth in local retail sales. The sector also encompasses many subsectors:
lodging, food services, gaming, cruise lines, travel, etc. There is an overlap between hospitality
and tourism. Hence, hospitality is not only important to customers, and employees, but also to
economies, and local communities. In addition to the Direct and Indirect impact, arguably,
hospitality has a Fiscal and Induced impact. Fiscal impact includes federal, state, and local taxes
that are collected from the operations of the business (sales taxes on revenues and payroll taxes).
Additionally, some local governments collect lodging taxes and other business fees, i.e.:
Sellers Permit and State license. Whereas, induced impact refers to the benefits on the
contractors, and suppliers through the jobs created and income generated by vendors that supply
goods and services to the hospitality firms. In other words, Induced impact is when the
household income/wages of employees and suppliers is re-spent on consumer product in the
community stimulating the economy further. Lastly, this study if successfully completed will not
only highlight the challenges that have detrimental effect to the sector, it will also serve as an eye
opener to stakeholders in the hospitality sector.
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1.7 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The research is designed to cover the event management within the hospitality industry, its
control measures and productivity/growth within the country. However, due to the diverse nature
and scope of the country and the time frame required for the report of the research , the research
has been scaled down to respondents in of Delta State Nigeria.
1.8 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
During the course of performing/researching this project work, the researcher is likely going to
encounter a lot of challenges as well as opposition which ranges from financial constraints, time
factor, sourcing of material etc. this factors in their own ways, may slow down the speedy
progress of this work that resulted to the researcher not being able to finish the research work on
time as is required.
1.9
DEFINITION OF TERMS
1) Hospitality Products and Services: They are things produced by the hospitality
industry to meet the need of customers in return of their money. They include foods,
drinks, accommodation, entertainment and other services like cyber café, car hire and
so on.
2) Event management: is the application of project management to the creation and
development of large scale events such as festivals, conferences, ceremonies, formal
parties, concerts, or conventions. It involves studying the brand, identifying the target
audience, devising the event concept, planning the logistics and coordinating the
technical aspects before actually launching the event.
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3) The hospitality industry is a broad category of fields within the service industry that
includes lodging, event planning, theme parks, transportation, cruise line, and
additional fields within the tourism industry.
4) Event planners coordinate and manage conferences, meetings and parties. Some
planners exclusively organize a specific type of event, such as those who specialize in
wedding planning.
5) New Trend: refers to new style in fashion or entertainment or the general way in
which a particular situation or style of doing things is changing
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CHAPTER TWO
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Theoretical Frame Work
The current study is anchored on the following theories in other to give a broad view of the
hospitality sector.
2.1. Resource-based view: The resource-based view (RBV) looks at the firm as a bundle of
resources that are the source of its sustainable competitive advantage (Barney, 1991; Grant,
1991). Resources can be physical (e.g. buildings, equipment), financial, human, and intangible
(e.g. trademarks, image) (Ivanova and Ivanov, 2015). They need to be valuable, rare, inimitable,
and non-substitutable to provide a competitive advantage for the firm (Barney and Arikan,
2001). While physical and financial resources are easy to copy by competitors, human and
intangible resources are more difficult to imitate and, hence, can serve as a stronger source of
competitive advantage. The resources are static and they are made dynamic by the organizational
capabilities, knowledge, and learning in order to create value for the consumers (Ivanova and
Ivanov, 2015). The tacit knowledge (i.e. organizational routines, the experience and unwritten
knowledge of employees) and codified knowledge (i.e. written service operations manuals) help
the company utilize its resources (Brown et al., 2003). The RBV has been adopted and discussed
in numerous studies (Barney, 2001; Barney et al., 2001; Evans, 2016; Lee and King,
2006; Wernerfelt, 1995), including in the hospitality (Alonso et al., 2018; Evans, 2016; Lee and
King, 2006; Massukado-Nakatani and Teixeira, 2009; Peters et al., 2011).
2.1.2. Value chain framework: The value chain framework looks at a company as a bundle of
activities. A company’s competitive advantage stems from how well (effectively and efficiently)
it performs its primary and support activities (Porter, 1985). The primary activities relate directly
to the production of the product (inbound logistics, operations, distribution, marketing and sales,
and after-sale service), while the support activities (firm infrastructure, human resource
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management, technological development, and procurement) are more transversal and facilitate
the primary activities. The value chain framework is complementing the RBV theory because it
shows a different source of competitive advantage (a company’s activities that mobilise the
resources). In recent years, the concept of ‘value chain’ has been extended to largely overlap
with the concept of ‘supply chain’ (Hjalager et al., 2016; Mitchell, 2012; Thomas-Francois et al.,
2017).
2.1.3. Stakeholders theory: The stakeholder theory (Freeman, 2004, 2010) looks at the firm as
a bundle of relationships. The stakeholder approach suggests that a firm or an enterprise cannot
survive without the involvement of stakeholders (Li et al., 2020a, b); thus, the interests of
stakeholders need to be identified and understood (Nguyen et al., 2019). The competitive
advantage of a firm is based on the network of relationships a firm has with various internal and
external stakeholders (customers, employees, managers, suppliers, distributors, local community,
public authorities, financial institutions, media, etc), who often have conflicting goals. The firm
is perceived not only as a profit-maximizing entity but as a socially engaged entity that considers
the interest of its stakeholders (Jurgens et al., 2010). Therefore, the evaluation of stakeholder
perspectives can be beneficial for tourism planning (Yang et al., 2009).
2.1.4. PESTEL ANALYSIS is a widely used framework for the analysis of the external
environment of a company. It focuses on the developments in the political, economic, socialdemographic, technological, ecological, and legal factors that shape the macro environmental
context in which a company operates (Morrison, 2018). These factors provide opportunities that
managers can utilize or create threats for which they must be prepared to face.
Within hospitality, the above four strategic management frameworks (RBV, value chain
framework, stakeholder theory, and the PESTEL analysis) were adopted by Ivanova and Ivanov
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(2015) who developed an integrative framework of hotel chains. The authors showed that these
strategic management frameworks can be successfully combined to provide a holistic perspective
of hospitality companies.
2.2. Positioning strategy: differentiation positioning is one of the most important elements of
strategic management that is providing long term advantages for firms to be successful in the
market (Rodríguez-Molina et al., 2019). It is defined as “performing different activities from
rivals’ or performing similar activities in different ways” (Porter, 1996: 62). The positioning
strategy is based on determining the competitors and offering a unique feature(s) to attract
potential customers. In this respect, uniqueness is a significant component of positioning strategy
(Rodríguez-Molina et al., 2019). As a basic element of positioning approach, differentiation
relates to the development of products and services containing unique attributes that provide
better value for customers compared to rivals’ (Porter, 1985; Banker et al., 2014). The main aim
of product or service differentiation is to build up a position that is seen as unique and creates a
sense of value for potential customers (Shoemaker et al., 2007). While a firm adopting a
differentiation strategy expects customers to pay higher prices for differentiated features of a
product, customers want to experience a service or product that meets their expectations (Porter,
1980). For a successful differentiation strategy, research and development (R&D) and
advertising are considered as basic requirements (Porter, 1980; Barney and Hesterley, 2006)
because while promotion contributes to the firm’s value, R&D leads to innovation and
uniqueness (Gao and Hafsi, 2019). The positioning strategy has been applied by various studies
in hospitality and tourism in terms of competitiveness, image and branding (Crompton et al.,
1992; Botha et al., 1999; Kozak and Rimmington, 1999; Andreu et al., 2000; Uysal et al.,
2000; Gallarza et al., 2002; Chen and Uysal, 2002; Claveria and Poluzzi, 2017; Evren and
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Kozak, 2018; Rodríguez-Molina et al., 2019). Since there is a harsh competition among
hospitality firms and destinations, positioning has become a significant part of their marketing
strategies (Rojas-Mendez and Hine, 2017). For an effective positioning strategy, the
differentiated features which distinguish one destination or hospitality firm from others would
need to be important and attractive product attributes (Crompton et al., 1992) that bring value to
the customers such as overall customer experience, hotel location, a unique service delivery
system (e.g. the use of service robots), décor, hote
CHAPTER THREE
3.0 Research Methodology
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This chapter focuses on the review of methods employed in the collection, presentation, analysis
and interpretation of data. The review aids any reader to comprehend the topic under study and
highlighted the procedure for data collection and analysis of research data.
3.1 Research Design
This study is descriptive research. This study will use a descriptive approach to assess the
demographic profile of the respondents and the challenges of event management. This research
will be conducted to explore the different challenges experienced by event management. The
research design for this study is a quantitative research approach as it is the most appropriate
approach to answer the research problem. Quantitative research collects data to quantify and
subject information for statistical analysis in order to support or counter alternate knowledge
claims (Creswell, 2003 cited in Williams, 2007).
3.2 Population of Study
The research respondents will be the event planner, event organizer and employees in municipal
tourism who conduct different events and festivals in the municipality of naval. We will
randomly select 150 event planner, event organizer and employees of municipal tourism that
would come to a total of 150 respondents in our study. They will be the involved respondents in
order to provide the necessary data to attain the objectives of this study.
3.3.1 Sampling Procedure
The questionnaires which contain the pool of items addressing challenges in event management
will be randomly administered to event planners, managers and employees in------- base on the
sample size.
3.3.2 Sampling Method
The sampling method that will be used in the present study is random sampling technique.
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3.3.3 Sample Size
The sample size will be determined by using sample size calculation method developed by
N
Yamane (1967) formula n=1+N(e2 )
Where; n = required sample size
N= is the population size with ±5% precision. (total number of event planners in
Auchi which is about 400)
N= 400 e = 0.05.
n=
400
= 200 participants.
1  400 0.05 2


3.4 Research Instruments
The following instruments will used to collect data for the present study it is divided into two
sections (A-B).
SECTION A: Demographic details of the participants; the first section of the questionnaire, the
section A, will contains 6 items which tap information on the socio-demographic characteristics
of the respondents. This includes age, gender, tribe, religion, marital status and educational level.
SECTION B: This section will contain pool of items addressing challenges in event
management in the hospitality industry.
3.5 Validation of Instruments
The study will adopt a predictive validity technique to determine the degree of reliability of the
instrument (questionnaire) in other to achieve the objectives of the study.
3.6 Procedure for data Collection
In gathering the data, the survey questionnaire will be subjected for approval from the Dean of
the School of Management and Entrepreneurship and instructor of the subject. Then, the
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researchers seek permission by writing a letter request addressed to the respondents namely to
the event planner, event organizer and municipal tourism employee. Thereafter, the survey
questionnaires will be distributed for them to answer.
3.7 Data Analysis Techniques
After the retrieval of the instruments, the data will be tallied, collated, tabulated and analyzed.
All data collected from the respondents will be systematically tabulated, tallied, carefully
described, explained and recorded in order to attain the accurate information needed from the
respondents. The data gathered from then survey will be scored as follows: On the challenges of
event management the following categorization of 5- point rating scale will be utilized: Strongly
Agree, Agree, Undecided, Disagree and Strongly Disagree. The data taken from the research
tools will be classified according to the problem in this research. The results will be tallied and
tabulated. The researcher will use statistical methods and techniques in analyzing data. To
determine the results of the study the researcher will use the mean and frequency percentage.
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