What Are the Impacts of the Different Attendant Characteristics and Expectations on the Planning and Design of an Event?

What are the impacts of the different attendant characteristics and expectations on the planning and design of an event?

In recent years, there is rapid growth in convention industry that attracts many participants from the world. “The number of people attending conventions is growing worldwide, yet little is still known about convention attendants” (Ramirez, Laing & Mair 2013, p.165). Since an event has different target customer, for this reason, Event Design is strongly affected by the attendant characteristics with different expectations. Event must have an objective, we should think about it and consider how to attract more customer. For instance, while designing a diversified event, such as Book Fair, it can appeal different customer with different characteristics. So, the event designer and planner need to light on different characteristics for designing a sound event that can cater and fulfill the attendant expectation and achieve what they want to experience, furthermore to attract repeat participants. The characteristics may include Age, Gender and Cultural Background… etc. This essay will mainly focus on Age, Gender and Cultural Background to analysis and evaluate how to design an event according to the distinct attendant characteristics.

To define above characteristics, Davidson (2008) stated, Age can be divided into four generational groupings: The Traditionalists, born between 1925 and 1942. Most, but by no means all of these, have retired or entered semi-retirement, The Baby Boomers, born between 1943 and 1960. The oldest of these have begun retiring from employment; Generation X, born between 1961 and 1976. Many of these are already established in management positions; Generation Y, born between 1977 and 1995. These form the latest cohort to enter the global workforce. Each group tends to have predominant, common traits. Gender means the culturally and socially constructed difference between men and women also the state of being male or female. Culture, broadly may refer to the social context within which humans live; the ways individuals perceive and respond to the world, but in simpler form, it is the values, beliefs and practices shared by a group of people (Pradhan, 2013).

Differences between generations can affect the event planning and design. Generations are identifiable by birth year and are potentially influenced by significant life experience during their personal and professional development (Fjelstul, Severt, And Breiter 2009, p.32). Age (Generation) grouped by Traditionalists, The Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y.

Traditionalists were born in World War II or before, some of them are lower educational level. For choosing the event destination, an event designer should choose the venue where convenient and easier accessibility, thus the attendants can easier get to the destination by types of transportation. Since they are old and may be suffered weak hearing and reading ability, so as an event designer, should be pay attention to people with physical, mental, and emotional disabilities. Also, for the venue design, it should be well equipped wheelchair facilities like slope and escalator…etc. During the event, the planner should arrange volunteers to help and assist these elderly to understand the information, such as briefly explain the leaflets and the event content. The explanation should be simpler as well as possible to let them know what they are visiting. To prevent they may not understand some content of the event, organizer should provide paper printed leaflet or books to the elderly, of course that cannot full of text words, it maybe through the photography to transmit the meanings and the content of event.