Assessment of Impact-Contribution of Cultural Festival in the Tourism Development of Thessaloniki

During the last decades tourism has shown a rapid growth in international level. This rapid growth of tourism has created the need for diversification and enrichment of tourism products of each destination. Thus, in this highly competitive environment, each tourism destination seeks to enrich and diversify its tourism product utilizing existing tourism resources or creating new tourist attractions, such as cultural festivals. In fact, the effects of cultural festivals, as noted in the international bibliography, are multifaceted and multilayered, since they not only contribute to tourism and economic development of a region but also to its cultural development. Thus, more and more regions worldwide wanting to extract positive results in economic, cultural and social level, organize cultural festivals. This study seeks to investigate and assess the contribution of cultural festivals in tourism development through the case study of the Municipality of Thessaloniki. Particularly, the aim of this study is to examine the contribution of cultural festivals, both in local businesses and in the whole city. More specifically, this paper consists of three basic parts: (a) the theoretical framework of the dissertation, analyzing theoretical concepts related to the tourism phenomenon and especially cultural tourism, (b) a case study which analyzes the current situation in the Municipality of Thessaloniki and in particular the organization of cultural festivals and (c) the research part, which describes the research methodology and analyzes the results of primary research.