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Music Festival Transport Logistics for Artists and Crews.

Andy Robertson

The transport logistics for any music festival is a key element of the organisation to ensure that artists and crews arrive in the right place at the right time. Depending on the size of the festival and the number of artists there are a variety of transport solutions available to festival organisers to make sure everything goes like clockwork. 


There is nothing worse than a disorganised transport system for a live music event when artists and crews need to arrive in good time for sound checks and performances. The bigger the festival the more complex these arrangements can get so having a well-planned and efficient system to manage this is essential.

Small Music Festivals.
A small-scale music festival with up to 50 performance artists is unlikely to need to employ a fleet of drivers and chauffeurs to ferry artists from hotels to an event site. Such a small event may have a handful of well-known headliners with most support acts making their own transport arrangements. The organisers may well only need to hire a handful of drivers and vehicles to cover the period of the event and these can easily be scheduled without too many headaches.

Large Music Festivals. 
A large-scale music festival with several hundred artists and their crews will require some significant planning and logistical organisation. Artists and crews may have accommodation in a nearby hotel or be arriving by plane at a nearby airport for example. During the advancing specification submission artists and crews will confirm their transport requirements including dates, times, locations and even the size of vehicle required. This data needs to be compiled for all booked artists and appropriate fleets of vehicles and divers allocated. For many festival organisers they find it easier to sub contract these transportation logistics out to a specialised supplier who will have a ready supply of reliable drivers and vehicles.

Advancing Linked to Transport. 
The transport requirements specified in artist’s advances will log all the necessary information that can be used to schedule drivers and vehicles. There are some software logistics solutions available that can link advancing information in real time to driver rotas and calendars which will make the task of organising the transport logistics somewhat easier.

Irrespective of how organisers schedule their transport arrangements over the festival dates it should always incorporate some flexibility to make allowances for late flight arrivals, changes in the number of artists and crew members to be transported and even AWOL artists. Building in some contingencies into the planning process may involve having drivers and vehicles on standby to allow for unexpected occurrences.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics including an advancing module that links to transport schedules in real time. 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, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Photo by Rene Asmussen via Pexels

Andy Robertson
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