The selected event included the Christmas Village Festival (CVF). The event was a tourism event providing the attendees with holiday arts and crafts and shopping activities between November 2, 2022, and November 6, 2022. The main event organizer was Christmas Village Festival Inc., with Nancy Schmalz as the lead event project manager. The event occurred at the BJCC (Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex) exhibition hall in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. The event’s mission was to bring people together in the context of friends and families to assist in ringing in the festive holiday season.
Attraction of Attendees
Before the event, the lead project manager underscored the significance of promoting the event to people from both within and outside of Alabama. The CVF was primarily grounded on a digital advertisement. In particular, the contemporary attraction of attendees in festivals relies on digital advertising to promote the event before its commencement (Suryawardani et al., 2017). Moreover, hospitality events can mainly benefit from digital advertising strategies involving television, internet, and broadcast channels as opposed to non-digital advertisements like brochures, banners, and printed media, as indicated by Suryawardani et al. (2017). The CVF management used social media (With greater emphasis on Facebook) and internet marketing through the CVF website and other websites like 10times.com and the BJCC.org website to promote the 2022 annual event.
Traffic Control and Packing
One of the core safety elements of an event involves traffic and parking control. Traffic planning and event management necessitate coordination with police and local authorities to establish and implement comprehensive traffic control for the occasion. According to Amini et al. (2016), traffic management requires traffic surveillance for detecting incidences, checklists, alternative, and collective transport applications, integrated platforms like public transport coordination, travel information services, and integrated payment systems, especially at points of entry. All these elements will result in safe and efferent management of the event.
Considering the case of CVF, the traffic and packing control was relatively effective since it included checklists for attendees to monitor their inflow and outflow from the event site, CCTV cameras and traffic control staff for controlling entry and exit of vehicles into and out of the event site. The event site provided ample parking for all attendees, with onsite parking present at the Lou Lou’s, Oh My Sole at 4045 Helena Road, The Clothes Tree by Deborah at 2880 Old Rocky Ridge Road, and The Row at 705 Paul W Bryant Drive. However, a parking fee was paid onsite with a fee of $20. For effective traffic control management, the event manager, BJCC management, and local Birmingham police provided attendees with signs of awareness on the closed 9th Avenue road for automobile traffic adjacent to the Legacy Arena.
Security
The emphasized security of the CVF event involves its privacy policy. The event management reiterated the significance of protecting the attendees’ information, including the utilization, storage, and protection of personal information. Additionally, third-party banking was used to verify the attendees’ payments. Security checkpoints were available at the points of entry into the arena and outside the BJCC exhibition hall. However, more than these measures are needed for an event like the CVF. The following recommendation is essential for the improvement.
Seating
The event could comfortably cater to the seating of every person who attended the event. Through observation, the event show was held at the BJCC exhibition hall with a space of 360,000 square feet, providing easy access to services offered at the show. The space provided attendees with an 18,000-seat arena, 1,276 seats available at the theaters, and a 2,835-seat Concert Hall. Cumulatively, the sitting space provided attendees with 21,661 seats that comfortably accommodated attendees. The sight lines for the theater offered the attendees a clear vision of the show. The clear sightlines allowed the attendees to navigate through different booths easily. The event manager noted that some staff members, especially ushers, were assigned to remove any obstacles that would bar the attendees from having a clear vision of the shows and moving around the exhibition hall.
Concessions and Merchandise
Every concession stands present inside the BJCC Concert Hall, the Legacy Arena, and the protective stadium was cashless for the CVF event. The cashless merchandise and concessions significantly reduced entry time for event management. Moreover, according to Nancy Schmalz, the cashless system was encouraged due to the current Corvid 19 pandemic. The entries of the attendees into the event were fast-tracked, significantly eliminating long wait time durations often experienced in mega-events.
Restrooms
Since the event attracts vendors, merchants and attendees globally, the restrooms are essential in event management. The CVF event was organized at BJCC, with 3-room bunkhouses with 30 beds and two restrooms. However, 33 attendees per mini lodge were allowed to use two restrooms. These restrooms are adequate for such a population of attendees since the PSAI (Portable Sanitation Association International) recommends at least one portable restroom for approximately one hundred guests (PSAI, 2022). The event had directional signs for all booths, including their locations.
Event Atmosphere and Extenders
Another important feature included the atmosphere and event extenders of the CVF event. The atmosphere displayed positive behavior amongst the attendees since they were not allowed to over-drink or misbehave during the event. Moreover, most attendees were generally families who adhered to this rule and maintained positive behavior. Event extenders included involvement opportunities such as sampling food products at different vendor location points and free entry fees for children below six years old. This strategy promoted event attendance for families with children resulting in the sales of nearly 80,000 attendees.
Recommendations
It is important to note that while the event was primarily promoted via online channels, a future similar event needs improvement, especially in promoting the event through local and national television channels and other social media channels to maximize the number of attendees. The project event manager mentioned that they received fewer attendees this year compared to previous years in which nearly thirty thousand attendees would attend this event. The CVF event project manager can increase this population by expanding the organization’s pre-event advertising campaigns to include social media channels such as Instagram, tweeter, and TikTok. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, TikTok is currently the leading social media channel accessed by the youth population (Vogels et al., 2022). Therefore, it is essential to leverage such platforms to increase the number of attendees in future CVF events.
The event management should ensure that the security team members can communicate effectively through daily briefings (Derrett, 2012). By doing so, the risk of security incidents would be highly mitigated. Another recommendation includes ensuring a complete thorough risk assessment prior to the commencement of the event. This process involves briefing the security personnel on the location of first aid, and medical facilities, along with stating every fire safety protocol (Wynn-Moylan, 2017). Even though several booths were present to display different artworks, some booths experienced congestion. Therefore the event management adheres to the size and clutter of the booths in their signage strategy to allow efficient movement across designated places.
References
Amini, S., Papapanagiotou, E., & Busch, F. (2016). Traffic management for significant events. Digital Mobility Platforms and Ecosystems, 187.
Derrett, R. (2012). Festivals, events, and the destination. In Festival and events management (pp. 32–50). Routledge.
PSA. (2022). Standards and regulations. Portable Sanitation Association International. Retrieved November 12, 2022, from https://www.psai.org/standards-and-regulations
Suryawardani, I. G. A. O., & Wiranatha, A. S. (2017). Digital marketing in promoting events and festivities. A case of Sanur Village Festival. Journal of Business on Hospitality and Tourism, 2(1), 159-167.
Vogels, E. A., Gelles-Watnick, R., & Massarat, N. (2022). Teens, social media and technology 2022. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. Retrieved November 12, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/
Wynn-Moylan, P. (2017). Risk and hazard management for festivals and events. Routledge.
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