What makes special events successful

“Planning and organisation are the key elements that determine the success of any special event” (Van der Wagen, 2001, p.111). Whilst success may be hard to measure Goldblatt and Supovitz (1999) believe that the best critical success indicators are the mission and vision statements as these are the “first stages in setting up expectancy and accountability” (p.99). All successful events “have five critical stages in common to ensure their consistent effectiveness” (Getz, 1997, p.31). These stages include research, design, planning, coordination and evaluation and form the basic concepts of planning and organisation Throughout this essay, the above stages will be discussed in detail and an analysis of past events will be used as a framework to establish the reasons why some events have occurred for hundreds of years and why others have blossomed and then sunk into obscurity.

The initial stage in planning a successful event refers to developing the event mandate, purpose ...