The impact of literary festivals on boosting tourist activity: the case of Escritaria

Abstract

The growing awareness towards literary tourism has given it a gradual popularity, strengthening its role in the tourist offer in Portugal.  Aware of this fact, we discuss, in this paper, the main initiatives of literary festivals in the country in the city of Penafiel. Experiences, images, and texts are increasingly important to achieve tourist realities. And it is through literary festivals that they are enhanced. Although event tourism has an increasingly interdisciplinary approach, the analysis of the literary experience is still scarce. The main goal of this article is to understand the experience provided by the literary festival ESCRITARIA which took place in 2022, holding its 15th edition. Therefore, a thorough literature review was done, as well as an exploratory and quantitative investigation. In addition, a data collection was carried out with a questionnaire designed to be answered online by the national and international participants in Escritaria. To understand Escritaria as a literary event proposal, one surveyed a sample of national and foreign participants in the festival; since it took place during the event, it allowed one to gauge the importance of literary events as an enhancing offer of the tourist activity. Starting from the sociodemographic profile of the participants, this study aims to understand the forms of participation, involvement and satisfaction. The results of the analysis highlight the growing importance of this type of events and this one, in particular, a festival that has been building loyalty and expanding its audience, an audience of national and international scope. This festival not only increases the number of tourists/visitors, but also enhances the destination promotion and marketing activities.