A Comparative Study of Korean and Chinese Festival Management Systems

Festivals and events are considered as a new wave of alternative tourism which contributes to sustainable development. On a global scale festivals and events with a strong cultural component are substantially increasing in numbers. How to manage the festivals is important to the success of them. This study aims to compare the festival management systems between Korea and China and to find out the differences between them through the empirical. A survey with the questionnaires focusing on the festival organizers is conducted. As a result, significant differences are found out in the management of festival program, budget and publicity between two countries. Compared to Chinese festivals, Korean festivals are more focused on the variety and creativeness of festival program. And they make more efforts to attract various media publicity, to develop festival web site for online publicity as well as to hold overseas publicity to attract foreign visitors than Chinese festivals. On the other side, Korean festival organizers show a more negative attitude to festival budget. Chinese festival government provides more adequate budget for the festivals and Chinese festivals have more financial. Based on the findings, available development strategies are also proposed for promoting Chinese cultural tourism festivals.