Today events are central to our society, bringing together different levels of experiences to the participants and for the communities. Bowdin et al. (2006) refers that increases in leisure time and discretionary spending have led to a proliferation of public events, celebrations and entertainment.
The concept of events management experienced a significant growth worldwide. During the last years events management has been analyzed by several authors (i.e. Bowdin et al., 2006; Getz, 2005; Goldblatt, 2002) and led to the publication of several articles and books. Today is a new an important academic topic in several universities around the world.
As Bowdin et al. (2006) states, until relatively recently, events have been seen as part of hospitality, tourism, leisure and recreation industries, or as a support service to businesses. However, the environment is changing and the events industry is emerging in its own right supported by a growing body of knowledge. Today is unimaginable to find a city or a town without at least an annual festival or a typical party where the management is very important.
Bernardette Quinn presents in her book an interesting perspective about the events management, with an integrated overview of every single phase of the management process as well as the impacts created in the community. It is not easy to find a book that offer a description of the whole event management process, as they normally focus on the management and marketing or even in a single type of event (i.e. special events, festival or sport event).
The book Key Concepts in Event Management is divided into 35 parts with a brief resume in the beginning of each part and the information of further readings at the end, complementing the information presented to the reader. The author tries to identify how knowledge has been developing over time and what could be the key directions of change. The main topic of the book is very actual and important, as it represent today an important issue in a national, regional and local level.
As Getz (2005) states, events are an important motivator of tourism, and figure prominently in the development and marketing plans of most destinations. The relation between events and tourism is focused in detail in the chapter 34.
In each chapter is possible to understand the several steps concerning the management process, from planning (chapter 20) to place marketing (chapter 19), from policy (chapter 21) to the importance of stakeholders (chapter 32). Bernardette Quinn considers a wide range of areas that are very important for the integrated management of an event, as well as the several impacts that can be reached during it. In our point of view the chapters should be organized in a different way, in order to be more understandable for the reader. We suggest that a bigger chapter of the integrated events management should be considered, in order to focus the several steps.
The author consider a broad range of concepts that are very important to understand the events management in a whole and as complex process that could be influenced by internal and external factors.
This book, indeed, makes a worthwhile contribution to the field of events management by bringing together in one single volume case studies and examples of different kinds of events worldwide, namely the ones related to the European city of culture (Chapter 7), Festivals (Chapter 11), Olympic Games (Chapter 18) or Sport events (Chapter 31).
Throughout the book it is not possible to see any figure or image that could present in resume a process or even and idea of event management, which is for us a huge lake of information.
Finally, to some readers the short sizes of the chapters can also be a little disappointing as some topics deserved to be developed further. From our point of view the different parts should be organized in a different way as well as with different titles in order to be easily understood by the readers.
This book could be interesting for planners, educators, graduation students and other persons involved in the events industry, as it presents several interesting topics that could be important to understand this industry as a whole. Key Concepts in Event Management, provides an interesting opportunity for readers to familiarize themselves with events management.
