3 Reasons Live Entertainment is so Important to the Tourism Industry

VACATION.

The tourism industry (namely resorts, cruise lines and amusement parks) seek to provide memorable experiences for their clients. These businesses aim to provide high quality luxuries that their patrons cannot find on a daily basis in their daily lives. And vacationers are looking for the same things when they're booking these trips.

If people wanted to stay home, not spend money, travel or be pampered, then they would take a "stay-cation." But they don't.

Live entertainment can be a major draw to vacationers, and a large factor in which resort, cruise line or amusement park they choose.

Keep them entertained and keep them happy.

RECOGNITION.

Norwegian Cruise Line just celebrated its 50th year in business in 2016, and although they've seen many successes and failures since launching, the company continues to pave the way for the cruise line industry in many ways (check out this article by the Associated Press; Norwegian Cruise Line Looks Back at 50 Years of Innovation and Challenges).

Anyway, innovation equals recognition in any field. Since people are always seeking what's new, popular and cutting edge, why not give them live entertainment that is new, popular and cutting edge. Again, this will lead to resorts, cruise lines and amusement parks being sought after specifically for their innovative entertainment. And thus brings media attention and recognition.

The Disney company is another great example. We all know Disney does tourism entertainment well. It dominates when it comes to entertainment in general, and then pair it up with resorts within their amusement parks in popular and tropical locations, and you have yourself a successful travel destination. Not to mention their lavish four-ship fleet, all of which are dripping in Disney entertainment.

ECONOMY.

One of the major Broadway producing moguls, Ken Davenport, put it wonderfully when he included this in his email blast on April 18, 2017; "Hey . . . just wanted to let you know that the Broadway grosses are up. And I don't mean that they were just posted. I mean they are up. Way up."

If Broadway is selling out seats and bringing well-earned audience members into the theatre, then the rest of the world should feel a little boost in performance art as well.

This, coupled with a growing investment in travel and tourism, is safe to project a healthy interest in theatre while abroad, or tourism entertainment, in the coming years.

According to a chart called Contribution of Travel and Tourism to World GDP published by the World Travel & Tourism Council in 2014, the tourist economy was already on a slow incline from a little under $6 billion in 2004 to almost $7 billion in 2014. The chart expects the GDP to rise to approximately $11 billion by 2024.

Check out an interesting article from Market Realist on this topic, here.

All of this illustrates why an investment in pioneering tourism entertainment is incredibly important to the hospitality entertainment sectors, like cruise lines, resorts and amusement parks.