Helsinki Summer Festivals : sustainability and marketing

Sustainable festival management had grown more important thorough out the years and the public are also very well-knowledged on the subject and want to support events that consider the sustainability aspects. Firstly, the goal of this thesis is to find out what the sustainability efforts are of the five largest festivals in Helsinki. In addition, the author wants to know how these festivals communicate their sustainability efforts to the public. The five chosen festivals are World Village Festival, Tuska festival, Weekend Festival, Flow Festival and Helsinki Festival. The theoretical portion of the thesis concentrates on the three aspects of sustainability which are economic, social/cultural, and environmental sustainability, festivals and their sustainability impacts and sustainable marketing. Qualitative research was chosen as the methodology for this thesis to gain the most knowledge on the sustainability and marketing efforts of the festivals. Content analysis was conducted on each of the festival’s websites and Instagram pages. The categories for the content analysis are provided and the research is based on these three categories. The results indicate that most of the five festivals researched for this thesis strive to improve their sustainability actions and most of them work on all the three aspects of sustainability and not just one. There was one festival out of the five that had very poorly communicated their sustainability efforts both on the website and Instagram, which was Weekend Festival. All the other festivals had communicated in some manner their efforts on the website as well as by posts on Instagram. Flow Festival was found to be the most advanced in their sustainability efforts and the communication of them. Further research could be conducted through interviews with the festival creators to find out more on their sustainability efforts as well as the importance of sustainability to the festival visitors and how they want to be communicated about them