7.1 Special events
Sometimes we get special ‘one-off’ events that increase or decrease demand hugely. Sometimes these are planned, such as a music festival. Sometimes these are unplanned or unexpected, such as an industrial fire. Example of special events: Notting Hill carnival
The Notting Hill Carnival in London is regarded to be the second largest carnival in the world, behind the one in Rio de Janeiro, with 1 million people attending over the extended holiday weekend. The carnival has about 40,000 volunteers helping out and usually about 9,000 police.
The carnival creates a huge surge in demand for both private and public services. In a normal year about 270 licensed food, drink and merchandise stalls temporarily appear. The organisers also provide support services, such as an extra 329 sets of temporary toilets. Local transportation has to adapt to be able to accommodate the extra inflow and outflow of people in the Notting Hill area. Local healthcare systems also have to deal with an extra 1,000 casualties needing ambulance or paramedic care, with 20% going to hospital.
Activity 8 Seasonality in your own service
Now apply these types of demand variation to your own work. Fill in the table below:
| Question | Your response |
| Are there daily fluctuations in your demand? If so, why? | |
| Does day-of-week affect your demand? | |
| What annual cycles of demand do you have (if any)? | |
| Are there special events that increase your demand? |
To what extent does your organisation measure or record demand and especially these demand fluctuations?
Discussion
We would expect most people to be able to identify examples of demand behaviour in all of the above categories. Anti-social behaviour, for example, tends to happen more when pubs and nightclubs are open but are starting to shut. They will also have an obvious day-of-week effect under most circumstances simply because Friday and Saturday are their busiest days of the week. However, these differences are becoming less noticeable in many cities. Most places will have annual cycles, but not necessarily the same ones. For example, university towns will have demand created by events such as ‘Freshers’ week’. Seaside towns will experience increases in many types of demand during the summer and other school holidays. You should be able to find special causes such as carnivals, concerts and festivals in many places.
The next section looks at how this understanding of demand patterns can help build a forecast that is used to predict future demand.