This is one of the most important areas in the tourism industry as many destinations use events to promote their destinations. Event tourism was established in the 1980s, and it has been defined as the organized planning, improvement of festival and special events as tourist attractions and it also plays an important role as image builder. (Jago et al., 2003; Tian and Johnstons, 2008). Moreover, Getz (1997, p.16) supports that there are two main definitions that can explain the meaning of event tourism. Firstly, event tourism is ‘the systematic planning, development, and marketing of events as tourist attractions, catalysts for other developments, image builders, and animators of attractions and destinations areas’. Secondly, event tourism is ‘a market segment consisting of those people who travel to attend events, or who can be motivated to attend events while away from home’.  Chalip and McGuirty (2004) also state that by the end of the 20th century, event tourism became one of the fastest growing sectors in tourism market.

There are different types of events such as arts events and sports events that help to encourage people to visit destinations because they want to attend events. Rompf et al. (2008) support event tourism as a popular and fast growth sector in the tourism industry because people spend a lot of money on different types of events and festivals around the world. In addition, Felsenstein and Fleischer (2003) explain that there are many reasons that many regions use festivals and events as a tourism promotion tool because it could help to increase the demand for local tourism. Some famous events and festivals can also help to recreate the image of a destination and promote the destination to the rest of the world. Higham (2005) also suggests that other reasons that many destinations want to host events and festivals might be because some cities do not have any unique physical icons to attract tourists to choose to visit their cities. For instance, Paris has the Eiffel Tower, New York has the Statue of Liberty and Sydney has the Opera House to encourage tourists to visit their city.