Tourism and Special Events: The Flower Festival in Madeira Island

Abstract

In many societies, events tourism stands out as a promising trend that generates economic and social movement to the place where it belongs. Special events, especially celebrations and festivals, function as instruments for promoting the image of a region as a tourist destination to be consumed. On the other hand, it is often through them that the community preserves their cultural identity front of the globalization process. This paper analyzes the dimensions of experience that tourists acquired in the Flower Festival at Madeira Island. To achieve the objective we applied a survey to tourists, and used as a theoretical model the ‘experience economy’ of Pine and Gilmore (1999).