Top tips for a better festival experience
Festival season is underway. Tickets are selling out for summer and autumn events, and many independent operators are already getting ready for next season. It’s critical that festival organisers learn from the success of their event, and the success of their compeititors to improve and offer more next year.
In decades gone-by, a festival was a success if there were a couple of decent music acts, plenty of alcohol and a late night silent disco. But things have drastically changed. Social media have caused consumers to become much more experiential. More is expected from festivals, and festival organiser should think on how they can add more value to their event.
The cost of living crisis is affecting both larger and smaller festivals. Yet, while larger festivals are being critcised for their high ticket prices, smaller independent festivals are growing in popularity, effectively marketing to their local and target audience. Smaller festivals are prioritising consumers, understanding their wants and need, and making sure customers hear about the event by utilising social media and local influencers.
To make the most of your consumer base and grow your audience, see these 9 tips that all festival organisers should adopt.
9 tips on planning and hosting a festival:
1. A range of food options
For too long, festival food has meant burger vans, ice cream trucks… no longer. With the wide array of food trucks and small ethnic culinary businesses available, consumers have grown accustom to quality and variety.
As an orgnaiser, if you want to create a mood that’s happy and vibrant throughout the festival, consider offering food options that are high in slow-release carbs and fibre. You may also want to consider free water stations to encourage guests to stay hydrated and refill water bottles rather than turning to single-use plastic bottles.
Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian; makes sure everyone at your festival is capably catered for if they choose to eat. Keep on top of your allergy information and ensure there is a range of rations available.
2. Use social media to create a festival community
The ultimate digital tool, social media has the power to make and break your festival – so be its friend.
Post about your event regularly, provide updates and take pictures. A super innovative tip is to have a screen showing all the tweets or posts about your event live streamed to the crowd. Create a hashtag to help bolster that interactive digital experience.
Advertising on social media provides a massive advantage and is farly simple. Grab some pictures and assets from past events and post them online to show how much fun your event is, drawing in future consumers.
3. Create family friendly viewing areas
Performance areas can be too loud and busy for families. Children often can’t see over people and there’s a higher chance of them getting lost or injured.
Consider creating a family viewing area which could involve something as simple as temporarily installing raised seating to the back or side of the main audience.
4. Offer your audience a range of entertainment
Music festivals are now displaying poetry, cinema, seminars and spoken word in an attempt to give festival goers a more rounded experience. Recently Glastonbury has taken up nursery rhymes and school assembly songs from before the millenium. Glastonbury has a theatre and circus area, whilst Reading and Leeds Festivals have battle rap competitions.
Try to connect your audience through different mediums. Have an arcade section or a few sporty games on offer, there are plenty of entertainment choices to choose from. Consider contacting a third party to increase the offering at your event.
5. Make some camping zones noise-free areas
One of the downsides of multi-day festivals is the potential lack of sleep. Try to limit the late-night volume by providing campaign zones a relative distance away from the event. Cutting the noise at night in some areas could make for a better day time experience. COnsider speaker placement and providing late night stewards.
6. Take inspiration from hotels and offer a ‘porter’ service
Anyone who has ever camped at a festival, especially a major one like Reading, Glastonbury or Creamfields, will know that one of the worst parts of the weekend is having to carry your luggage from the car park to your chosen pitch. Through mud, rain, gravel – not knowing where to go. Tent, rucksack, alcohol, folding chairs, sleeping bag, pillow… it’s tiring just thinking about it. It’s especially bad when the rain has been falling all night and you’re having to wade through a bog.
Take this stress away by providing staff members to carry luggage for people. You could even provide them with trolleys of sledto make things easier. One man even brought his stuff in a modified wheelie-bin at the recent Glastonbury.
7. Create convenience with an on-site shop
There are usually stalls selling clothes and merchandise, but what about the essentials. Provide access to pharmaceuticals, pillows and pringles; milk and matches; fruit and folding chairs.
Having a temporary shop improves the customer experience and adds an extra revenue stream for the organisers.
8. Speak to potential customers
Create a platform which reaches out to new customers. The best way to do this is through social media. Use Twitter and Facebook polls to suggest aspects of your festival and let your followers vote on their favourite. It’s also a great way of creating a buzz and selling more tickets. Have fun making suggestions and invovling your consumer base. Examples include, name a stage or what sporting event you’d like to see.
9. Offer the option to reserve camping pitches, or incorporate a VIP option
Allowing customers to pre-book their pitch gives them the peace of mind that they can arrive at a convenient time, and they’re not rushing or fighting for the best spot. This can be a paid option you offer, therefore also adding another revenue stream.
Putting on a festival is all about giving customers the best possible experience. Make VIP available for customers who maybe want to pay extra for that little bit more privacy and space. Make the VIP experience worth it, with exclusive amenities, water stations, high-class toilets and top food options.
Final tip for organisers – Dont forget festival insurance!
Beer festival, food festivals, car festivals, music festivals – all require insurance. Public liabilty insurance, employer’s liabilty insurance, bad weather and cancellation insurance are available from Insure Our Event. Festival insurance from Insure Our Event could prove to save organisers a lot of money in the long run. Organisers should also remember to ask stallholders and vendors to have in place their own insurance. They can purchase stallholders insurance with Insure Our Event too.
Share your thoughts and ideas with us on social media. For further advice on making the most of your event, risk management or insurance expertise check out our excellent resources.
