Success factors for cultural events as leisure and tourist attraction Andreas Kagermeier (University of Trier, Germany) 1 Introduction The last decade has seen an kind of “EVENT-ization” in urban tourism. Today a countless number of events and festivals try to attract potential visitors. At the same time an expanding engagement to present history and heritage by means of festivals, exhibitions or spectacles is to be observed in different tourist destinations. Seen the multitude of different events with the resulting high number of competitors addressing potential visitors the question arises which factors have to be fulfilled when aiming at successfully conceiving historically oriented events in cultural tourism. Cultural heritage has always been important in shaping leisure and tourism products (Steinecke 2002). In particular regarding the booming urban and city tourism, cultural attrac- tiveness is relevant (Deutscher Tourismusverband 2006). Especially in Germany - which is about to establish itself as an appealing incoming destination (Deutsche Zentrale für Tourismus 2006) - cultural urban tourism becomes more and more meaningful. In order to position an offer successfully in this tight market, it has to be adapted continuously to the market´s quality requirements and the most important trends in demand have to be selected up proactively. Since the 1990s the creation of experiences is one of the key ele- ments for the success of leisure and tourism supply. The orientation on creating experiences was at first served by artificial leisure worlds but it gains more and more significance in cities as well with intensifying the usage of events to increase a location´s attractiveness. The market success of a culture-orientated facility and/or cultural urban destination is there- fore determined substantially by generating products which are orientated on target groups and experience creation. Thus the way of staging and therewith the development of ex- tended benefits is highly important (Hartmann 2005). The valorisation of urban historic sites by events describes among others one manner. Many classical means of staging were successfully introduced within the last years. It is to be expected that their effectiveness as factor of attractiveness might reduce in the future, if there are no innovative ways of staging to be developed. Relating to these future forms of staging, the observation that visitors do not experience historic sites any longer only passi- vely and receptively can be made. Recent types aim at a new dimension of experience which tries to assign a far more active role to the visitors. Thus the guest is included into the staging process which on one hand enables more intense forms of experiencing. At the same time the borders between demand and supply become Manuskript für: Hangzhou Conference and Exhibition (ed.): 2008 China International Leisure Development Forum. Hangzhou 2008, pp. 327-349