Formulating Event Loyalty in Tourism: Lessons From the World Travel Market

The literature extensively focuses on loyalty formulation, but event loyalty is scarcely researched despite the substantial contribution of events in tourism. This article examines the formulation of event loyalty at the World Travel Market (WTM) in London. Using a sample of 274 visitors, it evaluates the impact of performance, the social, educational, and emotional value, and the marketing activities of WTM on event loyalty formulation and development. Moreover, it examines event loyalty in terms of employment orientation of an audience characterized in direct relevance with the tourism domain. The findings reveal that the most important factor affecting event loyalty is marketing activities followed by event performance, although all constructs appear to impact visitor loyalty of the examined event. In addition, the employment orientation of visitors substantially influences all the examined constructs. Finally, the study discusses several managerial implications concerning the formulation and development of loyalty in travel and tourism-related events.