Music festivals as promoters of tourism destination image. The case of the Vodafone Paredes de Coura Festival

Abstract

Tourism and events are not a recent phenomenon. What is new and important is the influence that events have on a destination's image. Events stimulate the development of destinations, they are image-building instruments of a territory, they increase the visibility of destinations and they complement tourism promotion. In the portfolio of events as tourist products, we can highlight music festivals, including the Vodafone Festival of Paredes de Coura (with more than 100,000 attendees), which takes place in the town of Paredes de Coura in the tourist destination of Porto-North (Portugal). The main objective of this article is to determine whether the image of the festival positively affects the image of the tourist destination. For this purpose, a questionnaire has been randomly administered among 395 individuals attending the festival, in which a total of 24 items of the festival and destination image are evaluated. The profile of the festival is also analyzed.