Event Planning and Tourism: A Case Study of the London Games Festival

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Fundamentals of Events

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Event Management..........................................................................................................................5
Two stages of Event Management Planning:..................................................................................8
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12
References......................................................................................................................................13

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1; Games played at the London games Festival...................................................................5
Figure 2: LOGO of London games Festival held in 2019...............................................................9

Introduction
This task focuses on the significance of event management in the tourism sector. This task
focuses on how effectively event planning can be implemented to ensure people enjoy at the
events and spend their leisure time happily. In this task, an illustration of the London Games
Festival is discussed in this task. It is a mega-event that attracts both customers as well as traders
annually to play games at the event which is organised with the purpose of boosting investment
and skills in the trading environment of the UK. Importance of managing and organising such
events is discussed in this task that also leads to the development of tourism sector in the UK. In
this task, the event planning is divided into two phases and discussed to understand the
importance of managing mega-events, like, London Games Festival.

Event Management
It is a process in which events are planned, and all the associated activities are coordinated to
ensure its successful implementation. Various planning activities of events include budgeting,
site selection, scheduling, acquisition of permits, arrangement for entertainers, event security,
catering, etc. Event management planning is a document that aligns all the activities of the
events, such as, London games festival, in the UK in a scheduled way to organise the enjoyable
and safe event.
Figure 1; Games played at the London games Festival
The growth of events industry is rapidly increasing. According to the research of Dr Joe
Goldblatt, who is a certified special event professional, around $500 billion is spent every year
on the events, festivals, and games occurring in different parts of the world. There are various
events organised in the UK, such as music festival, Bestival, Goosey fair, Hastings open bowls
tournament, Hogmanay, Loony Dook, etc (Event Management, 2019).
Events are held for different purposes, for example, to celebrate something, fairs, festivals,
parades, etc. are organised, while for the promotional purposes, political rallies, fashion shows,
etc. are organised across the globe. To organise a large gathering event, event manager must

have skills and capabilities so that it can deal with various vendors, set schedules, create a
budget, etc. for the planning of the best possible events.
Importance of event planning
To ensure the success of London games festival event, it is essential that it must be planned in a
systematic and scheduled manner, as a poorly organised event can harm the image of the event
managers. Event planning is vital due to the following reasons:
Identify customers’ needs
Event management planning helps to identify the needs of the customers before initiating
towards further planning. This is an important aspect, as, on an event, a large number of people
gathered, and therefore their needs and expectations must be satisfied at the event to make it
successful (Masterman, 2014).
Identify the right target market
The success of mega-events, like, London games festival is evaluated on the basis of the number
of customers it has appealed to. Hence, event planning helps to identify the right market so that
the event can attract a large number of people across the world.
Feasible execution
Event planning creates a detailed plan for the total costs involved in organising the event. In
addition to this, such cost is allocated to different components of the event; hence, wastage of
resources is optimised. The effective decision is taken with the help of planning, as it allows
identifying the size and scale of the event, schedule, and required resources. Create a clear
master plan (Mair and Whitford, 2013).
Event publicity
Event planning helps to set the budget for the promotion and publicity of events that create a
better brand of the event management organisation in the market. Positive publicity is used with
the help of social media, and other marketing tools that create a positive impression among the
tourists to ensure successful happening of London games festival.

Ensure safety at the event
During London games festival, a mega-event, large number of people gathered at one place.
Therefore, their security must keep at the priority. This requires planning all the security and
protection measures to ensure the safety of the people at the events. Especially large scale events
require high safety of every component of an event (Getz and Page, 2016). Hence, event
management planning introduces provisions for medical aid, security booths, emergency exit,
etc.
Risk management plan
Organising large events are highly prone to risk, and therefore event planning helps to make
provisions and backup regarding any failures at such an event. Tourists come to the London
games Festival from different parts of the world to watch and play games there, therefore, their
security and safety are must at such an event.
Tourism
The effective planning and happening of events, like, London Games Festival attracts more
tourists across the world. In addition to this, tourists visit the events and after watching it, they
also spend their leisure time to explore other tourist destinations in the UK. Creative
management and implementation of event create large opportunities for the tourism industry in
the UK (Van der Wagen and White, 2018).

Two stages of Event Management Planning:
Planning
In the planning phase of event management, coordinators, project managers, and sales team
worked together and dedicated towards their work to ensure successful happening of a mega-
event. For example, to organise London Games Festival effectively, which is featured with 400
games is required to be thoroughly planned by the cross-functional team so that thousands of
people get attracted towards it.
Planning for an event begins with understanding the profile of the client, understanding the brief
of the event, expected target audience, and other components of the event. It is essential to set the
goals and targets of the event and identify the needs to organise such an event. This helps to
drive the efforts of the team towards the successful occurrence of London games festival. After
deciding goals, and objectives, another important task is to determine various activities that are
required to be done by different team members for organising a successful event. Such a team
can be formed as per their specialisation, such as venue management team, speakers,
entertainment team, publicity team, volunteer management team, etc.
The planning function for London games festival includes the coordination of various activities,
such as liaison with another team, discussing, arranging technical specification, like, sound,
stages, sets, and sounds. In addition to this, other activities include finding and short listing
artists, and creative persons. The planning stage of an event includes setting the dates, which
must be taken considering various religious and statutory holidays, school holidays, etc. The
condition of the venue and gathering of the people is required to be considered and discussed
with the clients to avoid inconvenience to the public at large events.

Figure 2: LOGO of London games Festival held in 2019
Another component of planning for London games festival includes considering the soft issues
like, whether the event will be sponsored, ticketed, or non-ticketed. After deciding, such aspects
planners are required to create a risk management plan so that uncertainties at the event may be
avoided. This includes planning for emergency exit, safety and security measures, etc. After
planning such activities, cash flow statement is required to prepared that includes inflows and
outflows of the event like, London Games Festivals. Inflows include a combination of revenues
from ticket sales, sponsorships, event production charges, commissions, artist management fees,
etc. while outflow includes the expenses incurred for the payment to the vendors, venue rentals,
payments to artists, etc.
Designing
After the planning phase of event management, the next step is designing and implementation of
London games festival event plan at the scheduled date. Events are based on the effort of a team,
rather than of a single individual. Hence, it is essential to allocate different activities to the team
members so that responsibility can be shared among the staff members to implement the planned
event successfully. The event, such as, London Games Festival are required to be organised with
full coordination of staff members as it is a large event that gathers more than 60,000 people.

Hence, it is essential for the planning manager to ensure the availability of necessary
infrastructure at the event regarding, lights, sounds, sets, stages, etc. Non-availability of any such
infrastructure may result in failure of events and affect the upcoming image of such events.
The publicity activities of the events are required to be handled by the planning manager so that
more recognition of events like the London Games Festival can be created. Publicity activities
before the happening of events include press meets, releases, posts on social media, discussion
about the games that will be played in the London Games Festival on social media, etc.,
promotional emails, promotional schemes and discounts, etc. The responsibility of coordinator
arises, now to ensure that required permission from the government is taken to conduct such
event for the large public.
The hospitality management is also an important task that is required to ensure as per the
planning document of the event. It is the responsibility of the planning coordinator to ensure that
on the day of event healthful food, accommodation, and other services are available to the
people. In addition to this, meeting with sponsors, and other parties are required to be done
before the event to ensure that they fulfil what they have committed to do.
To ensure all the activities are implemented as per the set framework of the event management
plan, evaluation and controlling activities are required to be done. Events are conducted with
different purposes, and therefore the success of the London games festival event is measured as
per their purpose. Evaluation of all the planned activities helps to measure the extent which an
event is successful organised or not. The prime objective of the evaluation is to critically
examine the entire event activities to identify what is going wrong in executing the event plan.
After such examination, project manager recommends important suggestions which are required
to be implemented to satisfy the expectations of large people gathered at the event, like, London
Game festivals.
Evaluation and Controlling activities basically involve identification, measurement, and
necessary precautions to avoid uncertainties during, before and after the occurrence of the
London games festival event. Understanding of predefined objectives of Mega events, such as
London Game festivals is necessary to evaluate its outcome effectively. After understanding the
objectives, actual performance is measured with the set benchmark. Any deviations occurred

while evaluations must be carefully removed to reduce the probability of happening any
unnecessary issues during or after mega-events.

Conclusion
The above discussion shows that event planning and designing of events are essential part of
event management planning. Without these phases, no event can be successfully implemented
and this may negatively impact the leisure and tourism sector of the UK. There are various event
management organisations in the UK that are dedicated to organise mega-events like, London
Games Festival effectively. Successful implementation of event plan helps to attract more
tourists towards future events and other tourist destinations in the UK.