Impacto de los festivales en el turismo patrimonialel caso del Festival Internacional Cervantino

Abstract

Many cities with a high presence of heritage tourism have shown a growing interest in organizing large scale events. Events have important competitive advantages compared to other tourist products, since visitors spend more than average (Herrero et al., 2012). In addition, the branding image of the city is improved (Richards y Wilson, 2007), events are useful to differentiate places that are similar in many cities (Bernad Monferrer, 2011) and they are more flexible than other resources like built heritage. The objective of the research is to analyze the impact of the Festival Internacional Cervantino, celebrated every year in Guanajuato (Mexico) on visitors’ perception and on the number of visits to heritage resources. To do so, questionnaires were delivered following the Event Experience Scale (EES) methodology, which is currently being used by members of the ATLAS Event Experience Research Project in similar cases all over the world. For the specific case of Guanajuato 230 surveys were delivered to attendees to the 2015 edition of the festival. It can be concluded that there is a significant difference in the perception of local, national and foreign visitors. The visit to heritage resources is far from the numbers expected taking into account the massive arrival of visitors and the intensive promotion of the city’s attractions.