Abstract
Festivals have become one of the most popular types of events. Many factors need to be brought together for the festivals so that people can get rid of the stress of daily life and have different, life-enriching experiences. These factors, which are brought together in the planning and organization stages of the festivals can be considered as key success factors. Although the research shows different results regarding the festival success factors, the most important factors are cited as the festival program, the festival area, accessibility, information, employees and volunteers, souvenirs, convenience, food, and security. In addition to these factors, the festivals organized in recent years have benefited from many technological applications which have increased the participants' experiences. Robots, internet of things (IoT), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), and self-service technology applications may be among the key factors that will play a role in the success of future festivals.
TopIntroduction
With the technology developing rapidly and exponentially, different technological applications are being used in different fields. There are technological applications that facilitate our life and allow us to have different experiences. They are part of our daily life, from the houses we live to the hotels we have vacation, and from the shopping malls to the events we participate to get away from the stress of daily life (Dalgıç and Birdir, 2017).Today, robots have evolved into a structure that can act autonomously and perform tasks. They can perform data while simultaneously storing data (Smart Hotel Technology Guide, 2018). “Internet of things (IoT)”, which enables objects to work in coordination with each other and turns objects into smart assets, makes human life easier. IoT can be easily controlled via sensors and mobile devices and enables the use of this data in subsequent applications by helping to obtain data. Virtual reality (VR) enables individuals to have real experiences with the virtual world (Desai, Desai, Aimera and Mehta, 2014), and augmented reality (AR) enables interaction between objects by combining the virtual and real world. These two technological applications frequently take place in our daily lives (Chung, Han and Joun, 2015: 589) such as in our homes, entertainment centers, hotels, marketing activities of businesses, etc. Another technological application, artificial intelligence (AI), is an application that enables machines to work like humans by sensing, understanding and learning. Through AI, machines can interact with people and react to people (Smart Hotel Technology Guide, 2018). Finally, self-service technology meets the needs of people without involvement of any human representative and provides individual experiences (Smart Hotel Techology Guide, 2018).
These technologies are mostly used in information & communication area using their data, autonomous and data processing functions (Dalgic and Birdir, 2020).These technologies come to the fore in the context of events in recent years, and that each of them is used in event themes. The organization of the festivals with a technological theme, has been increasing in recent years. Therefore, technology will become an important key factor in offering different experiences to the participants by successfully integrating robots to the events and using technologies such as IoT (Akiyama, Murata, Tsuchiya, Yokoyama, Maggio, Ciulla, Santana, Zhao, Nascimento and Gürgen, 2017; Groenli, Flesch, Mukkamala, Vatrapu, Klavestad and Bergner, 2018), VR (Wang and Tsai, 2019), AR (Cimbaljević, Stankov, Demirović and Pavluković, 2019), AI (Yang, Henthorne and George, 2020) in the non-technological festivals. For the festivals to be held successfully, it is necessary to bring together many factors in the planning and organization stages. When the studies on key factors that make the festival successful are examined, elements such as festival program, festival area, accessibility, information, employees and volunteers, souvenirs, convenience, food, and security come to the fore (Dalgıç, 2018), but there are limited findings about technological factors. There are uncertainties about which of the technological applications are included in the festivals and which technological applications influence the experiences of participants. This chapter sheds light on the technological applications that may be among the key factors in future festivals. First, the results of the research on the key success factors of the festival will be explained to the readers. This will be followed by elaboration of technological applications in the success of the festivals with sample applications. The chapter concludes with recommendation for future research and conclusion.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Dance Robots: They are robots that we can often encounter in music festivals and can dance in coordination with each other and with people. At a festival held in China in 2016, 1007 dance robots managed to enter Guinness World Records by dancing at the same time. This increased the consciousness of dance robots.
Festival Key Success Factors: These are the factors that are brought together in the planning and organizing stages of the festivals and affect the perception that the festival has been successful. Factors such as “festival program”, “festival area”, “accessibility”, “information”, “employees and volunteers”, “souvenirs”, “convenience”, “food”, “security” can be counted among the factors affecting the success of the festival.
VR and AR: VR is a technological application that creates entertainment and experience by presenting the virtual world to the computer environment. AR, on the other hand, presents an integration of both virtual and real world to individuals.
IoT: IoT enables objects to connect with each other and work in a coordinated way, IoT facilitates human life by working directly and indirectly with devices such as “sensors”, “identification tags”, and “mobile devices”.
Self-Service Technology: This technology can meet the needs of people and make their lives easier and fulfill the demands of people without the need for any representative.