The Rise of the Hotel and Resort Music Festival.

There has been a trend in recent years for resorts and hotels in popular tourist destinations to host their own music festival. Many of these have grown organically over the years and in some cases have become sizeable annual events attracting perhaps in excess of 10,0000 visitors. Is this an emerging trend for the future? 

Anyone who has been to a summer holiday destination has probably experienced a hotel or resort live music event. It's been normal for years for resorts to provide some kind of evening entertainment for their guests, especially if the resort is located in a remote location. For ambitious events managers at some resorts these regular evening events have morphed into larger events attracting more well-known performance artists and a large crowd not limited to the resort's staying guests.

It makes financial sense for a resort owner that perhaps has empty unused land adjoining their property to consider hosting a music festival. As most resorts already provide regular live performance entertainment, they likely have an experienced events team in place but may need to scale up resources for a larger event. In addition, they probably already possess audio equipment for a stage backline. These are already fixed costs for the resort and so it makes financial sense to host a larger music festival. Using a resort to host a music festival also benefits the resort owners during the festival period because they can sell their accommodation and earn additional revenue by providing camping facilities and food and beverages. By controlling these the resort event's team can build a selection of packages for event goers.

Many of these music festivals hosted by resorts have started as small niche events some specialising in particular music genres and have grown and expanded over the years. For any resort considering starting their own festival they should consider starting small and experimenting with different lines ups and festival make up. The financial risks are minimised because the resort already owns the venue and facilities as well as having the logistical events support teams in place.

There are good examples of how these low-key low volume hotel and resort hosted music festivals have evolved over time particularly in popular skiing resort destinations but also tropical islands in the Caribbean or South East Asia and of course Ibiza. Such is their popularity that even the larger hotel chains are setting up their own music festival divisions. In 2018 W Hotels launched its luxury music festival series called “Wake Up Call” which brought the music off of the muddy field and into its own hotel grounds. Their initial series included W properties in Hollywood, California; Barcelona, Spain and Bali, Indonesia. This series has gone from strength to strength and continues to expand around the world.  

For any hotel or resort planning a music festival using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their music festival. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors guestlists and ticketing.

Image by Rui Neves from Pixabay

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