Critical Issues in Tourism - A discussion on how the Social Exchange Theory (SET) has impacted Tomorrowland Festival in Belgium. PDF

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A discussion on how the Social Exchange Theory (SET) has impacted Tomorrowland Festival in Belgium...

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Critical Issues in Tourism MHN822510-17-B

Student Name: Samuel da Silva Costa Matriculation Number: S1522896 Essay Question: A discussion on how the Social Exchange Theory (SET) has impacted Tomorrowland Festival in Belgium.

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Student Signature: Samuel Da Silva Costa Date: 13/03/2018

Word Count: 1,971

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Introduction This essay focuses on the example of Belgium’s Tomorrowland music festival to discuss the impacts of the Social Exchange Theory (SET) in the development and growth of events such as this in the global tourism field, particularly through the themes of reciprocity and online community engagement. In August 2005, Tomorrowland – an electronic dance music festival – was held for the first time in the Belgian town of Boom. About 10,000 people attended the fairy tale themed event on that year. Wordof-mouth throughout Belgium and neighbouring countries continued to spread over the next two years. In 2007, the number of visitors double as well as the duration of the festival, which took place over 2 days. Its popularity continued to grow and in 2009 all tickets were sold-out for the first time. The festival’s campsite DreamVille was introduced in 2010 with 25,000 people using this place as their accommodation provider. The demand for tickets was so high that a third day was added in 2011 and 180,000 tickets sold-out in less than a day. In 2012, Tomorrowland officially became the most global festival on the planet and won the International Dance Music Award for Best Music Event in Miami. With the launch of its own YouTube channel, it also became the most-watched music festival on earth in the same year, with over 8 million people watching the videos. Tomorrowland truly became a global tourism event when in 2013, it gathered over 200 nationalities in its grounds (Tomorrowland, 2018). The same year saw the launch of Tomorrowland’s official travel packages – the Global Journey packages – in partnership with Brussels airlines came to light as a response to its global success and demand. The airline and other Star Alliance partners operated 140 extra flights from 67 cities across the globe to take 8,000 festival-goers to Brussels with following transfers to their hotels or the campsite DreamVille (Brussels Airlines, 2013). Tomorrowland’s partnership with Belgium’s national airline showcases the significance of the festival to the country and the scale of its international reach. Other editions of the festival have emerged in the US and Brazil. TomorrowWorld in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia took place between 2013 and 2015 but was cancelled in 2016 due to a reported unsuitable environment (TomorrowWorld, 2016). News reported festival goers were affected by adverse weather conditions and transport issues and were left stranded in the 2015 edition (Medved, 2015). The Brazilian edition of the festival took place in 2015 and 2016 but was also cancelled in 2017 “due to external factors”. According to the official website, the organizers are working to bring it back to the country as soon as possible (Tomorrowland Brasil, 2016). These events support the relevance of place which has an impact on different tourism events since tourism is a service that unlike a product cannot be tested and is based on experiences (Tassiopoulos, 2008). While the festival was, and to date still is, hugely successful in Belgium, that was not the case in other places, regardless of being under the same brand and held by the same producers. In 2017, the demand for tickets to attend 2

the Belgian festival was so high that the event took place during 2 weekends, lasting 6 days rather than the usual 3. Tourism has been considered as an important force driving globalisation, whereas tourism developments are also shaped by the increasing interdependence across the globe (Song, et al., 2017). UNITE with Tomorrowland was introduced in 2017, featuring live stream shows in 7 different cities around the world, with synchronised special effects with the Belgian show. This development is a good illustration showing the importance of recognising the impact a more globalised world has on global tourism events such as Tomorrowland.

Sociology and Tourism In general terms, sociologists tend to follow theoretical perspectives to understand ways in which the society works and changes over time. The research on general sociology saw numerous developments over the years, as did the research on applied sociology. The discussion about the sociology of tourism has emerged quite a few decades ago (Dann & Cohen, 1991). Cohen (1972) identified there was a need to start looking more seriously at the growing phenomenon of international tourism and its impact on societies. Since tourism is a complex field which requires the involvement of various stakeholders, there is not only one theoretical approach that can be followed to study this phenomenon. Instead, its interpretation is made up of different sociological theories which complement each other and provide a more comprehensive analysis of the reality of tourism (Dann & Cohen, 1991). The Social Exchange Theory (SET) in sociology was first developed by two pioneers, George Homans and Peter M. Blau (Calhoun, et al. 2002; Shiau & Luo, 2012). Homans (1958) argues that “social behaviour as exchange” is based on interactions between participants to exchange tangible and intangible goods, including “symbols of approval or prestige”. The behaviour of an individual involved in exchange is affected and changes according to the cost and value they associate with that action. In addition, Homans suggests that interactions in the social environment are twofold, other people are part of the environment each individual reacts to the same way that individual is part of the environment others respond to. Drawing on Homans perspective of cost and value, Calhoun et al. (2002) defend that individuals change their behaviour in accordance to responses of others to previous experiences, attempting to maximise positive reactions and minimise negative ones. In the second edition of his first book published in 1964, Blau (2017) demonstrates a different version of exchange theory that looks at collective outcomes and sees social interaction as a valuable need for people. People engage in social exchange when they perceive anticipated rewards from that interaction. Those rewards can be based solely on the pleasure of being with someone (intrinsic), a 3

service or good that someone may be providing (extrinsic), or even both. This social exchange emerges when both parties involved are benefited. Blau adds that social exchanges tend to happen over long periods rather than instant transactions, this is because ‘social debts’ do not have specific values and cannot be repaid immediately. Therefore, social exchange is associated with the idea of trust, which cannot be built rapidly, and the notion of reciprocity. The motives behind social interaction may also be divided into egoistic and altruistic motives, where the former proposes human behaviour is motivated by economic rewards and the latter suggests individuals are prepared to engage in interactions that may not result in valuable returns.

Tomorrowland and the Social Exchange theory Tomorrowland differentiates itself from other music festivals because it focuses on the holistic view of customer experiences. The festival created the community People of Tomorrow, very popular on social media, to give festival goers a sense of inclusion and participation in the event. While the festival only runs over two weekends in July, the event organisers publish videos and materials regarding the festival all year round to keep users engaged. Additionally, Tomorrowland features pre-event activities such as travel and accommodation packages around Belgium and Europe as well as post-event activities such as a detox day to recover from the festival weekend and after movies about the festival. This ensures a close relationship with customers before and after the event takes place (Voorheesa, et al., 2017). This may have played a vital role in bringing about Tomorrowland’s “title of biggest social media music event ever”. The official live stream and other content on social media surpassed 1.2 billion views which represent the largest online community engagement ever seen regarding a music festival until now. The success of Tomorrowland in becoming a global event may be discussed through a SET perspective. One of the key themes behind SET that can clearly be associated with Tomorrowland is the concept of reciprocity. According to SET, the model of reciprocity could explain the commitment and motivations of members to sharing knowledge within a community (Lin, et al., 2009). This reciprocity can be either direct or indirect, depending on whether it is related to exchange between two people or exchange within a larger group. Because support exchange is often associated with attachment between participants, when it happens in a virtual community, it creates a sense of virtual community (SOVC). The SOVC usually results in collective emotional connections and feelings of affiliation that can contribute to people’s willingness to engage in a long-term relationship with the event (Blanchard, 2008). When people feel emotionally connected to an event they will share their positive experiences with others through, for example, online word of mouth which arguably may increase awareness and attendance to that event. Additionally, it may be argued that electronic word of mouth is intrinsically 4

associated with the social exchange theory. This may be because electronic word of mouth is possibly one of the most cost-effective ways of sharing knowledge and therefore more individuals will be willing to engage in this type of exchange. Since Tomorrowland has such a strong presence on online social media platforms and communities, its success can be explained by SET which looks at knowledge sharing and advantageous exchanges between actors as a means to explain human behaviour (Lin, et al., 2009). If Surma’s (2016) findings are accurate, SET can be verified in online social networks in the same way it had been verified before for offline exchanges. Strong empirical observation by the same author shows that “an increase in the number of reciprocity messages the actor broadcasts in online social networks increases the reciprocity reactions from his or her audience.” Nunkoo (2016) holds the view that when participants engage in an exchange where the benefits exceed the costs, these are more likely to participate in repeated interactions over time. Reviews and the 4.9-star rating from Tomorrowland's official Facebook page suggest that festival goers perceive the monetary spending as an immaterial cost when compared to the feelings of pleasure and enjoyment which result from attending the event. There is a strong possibility that this is related to the recurring attendance and growing demand that the festival has been experiencing over the years. The fact that the festival failed to be successful in other destinations outside Belgium appears to be in harmony with the values of SET. This can be argued because festival goers in those destinations allegedly had negative experiences from attending the event – due to unsuitable environments such as the weather and transportation issues mentioned previously – and that resulted bad feedback shared in social media platforms amongst members. The bad reputation resulted in the cancellation of the festival by the producers since demand no longer met the requirements, showing the importance of word of mouth and knowledge sharing explained through SET (TomorrowWorld, 2016; Medved, 2015; Tomorrowland Brasil, 2016). Festival-goers in Brazil and the US no longer saw the investment required to attend the festival as a cost that justified the benefits it would bring. In summary, this essay started by explaining what Tomorrowland is about and described its course of development throughout the years to provide the reader with strong background information about the event. It mentioned its global reach as a tourism event and highlighted the importance of time and place for a tourism event to take place as well as the festival’s strong online community and producers engagement with online social media. Secondly, it briefly looked at sociology and the relevance of its application when studying tourism and human behaviour followed by an analysis of the Social Exchange Theory (SET). Finally, the essay attempted to provide an evaluation of how SET has impacted Tomorrowland and critically discuss this by providing examples. The essay has shown that SET is one of the theories that can be used to explain the success of Tomorrowland through the

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notion of reciprocity in social exchange and the producers’ commitment to improving online community engagement among their users.

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Voorheesa, C. M. et al., 2017. Service encounters, experiences and the customer journey: Defining the field and a call to expand our lens. Journal of Business Research, Volume 79, pp. 269-280.

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