Local Culture Festivals and Sustainable Tourism Development in Mountain Areas. The Region of Epirus, Greece

Worldwide events and festivals have increasingly become a significant tool for local economic development as a dynamic sector of the tourism industry, promoting and (re)branding cities and regions. Despite growing interest in festivals in the international academic literature, little attention has been afforded to the under-investigated festivals in mountain areas. For mountain communities festivals appear to be a rare lever for tourism development. In remote mountain communities, suffering from poor accessibility and tourism infrastructure, local festivals strongly connected with the place’s identity, uniqueness and authenticity, are increasingly seen as links to the history and culture of localities and as a novel and authentic experience for visitors, benefitting local communities that face numerous economic, social, and environmental challenges. This paper provides insight into sustainable tourism opportunities in mountain communities, through festivals related to local culture and traditions. The study investigates the typologies of these festivals in relevance to the digital tools (DG) and degree of social media (SM) use. The paper’s methodological approach explores these mountain festivals’ typologies by use of online content analysis, based on structural characteristics of DG and SM like nature, purpose, presence, to promote host marginalized mountain communities as tourism destinations. Mountain festivals in the Region of Epirus, a Region with rich cultural heritage, are selected as the study area to highlight the proposed methodology. An intraregional analysis is applied to explore the diversification of festival tourism dynamic potential among the Regional Units of Epirus and the need for festivals’ networking.