As local governments regard the tourist industry as an attractive clean industry, many local governments have competitively implemented regional festivals and local events. According to national statistics, more than 412 regional festivals are officia...
As local governments regard the tourist industry as an attractive clean industry, many local governments have competitively implemented regional festivals and local events. According to national statistics, more than 412 regional festivals are officially counted nationwide. However, there have been severe competitions and redundancies among different regional festivals on negative effects.
This study considers the Gangneung Dan-O-Je as a typical regional festival from geographical perspectives of tourism with emphasis on three different elements of tourist activities such as tourist object, tour subject and intermediaries. So to speak, this study takes Gangneung Dan-O-Je as a tourist object, while regarding festival participants as tour subject, and considering programs of Gangneung Dan-O-Je as intermediaries.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of Gangneung Dan-O-Je as well as to search for the direction of future development. The interviews and questionnaire survey have carried out during the period of 4 8 June, 2000. A total of 267 questionnaires were collected from visitors at the site of Gangneung Dan-O-Je and were used for analysis.
The major findings are as follows:
(1) Temporary ad hoc committee around civic cultural center organizes Gangneung Dan-O-Je itself. The local government just plays supporting role with limited budgets in advertising and implementing festival without financial support from central government.
(2) The festival programs comprise total thirty-two different sub-programs not enough to bring out public interests. Most of programs are classified as just types of observation instead of public participation. The festival site is temporarily established along the riverbank, resulting in lack of infrastructure and open spaces, especially for parking lots. Even the stores and merchants are not representing famous local products and culture.
(3) The visitors are mostly coming from local region, followed by the Capital Region and nearby province, implying the strong influence from Seoul due to high accessibilities. Despite constraints from a limited number of samples, we can see general characteristics of visitors at the Gangneung Dan-O-Je. The most common type of visitors is shown as groups of family and friends traveled by private motor vehicle with the purpose of recreation only. The group visitors also show education-oriented activities throughout nearby cultural resources such as Gyungpo-dae and Ojukheon that is famous at Gangneung. Visitors usually gather festival related information from informal circle like family and friends, instead of public advertising. The main reason is that they think Gangneung Dan-O-Je as routine festival at annual base. The type of visits shows one-day-only visiting pattern compared with overnight visiting pattern because local peoples are major source of festival visitors. The survey shows that visitors from outside region commonly stay with their friends or relatives at the local area. Furthermore, concerning psychological satisfaction towards the festival, there are considerable differences between ages. Although general satisfaction level is not so high enough, aged group gives high scores on satisfaction compared with young aged group. The price of food and beverages are shown up as the most unsatisfied matter.