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Mobile Phone Charging Options for Festival Sites.

Andy Robertson

The smartphone has become an essential part of everyone's daily life and festival-goers are no exception to this. One of the biggest challenges for visitors attending a multi-day event is maintaining their mobile device charge. How can organisers ensure sufficient on-site charging capacity and what options do festival-goers have.


The number of reasons that smartphones are taken by visitors to music festivals varies but research by Statista indicates what visitors mostly use their phones for and include: 

  • Calling someone at the event 63%.
  • Texting someone at the event 70%.
  • Instant messaging 44%.
  • Sharing content on social media 41%.

With most mobile phone battery charges last between 5 and 12 hours (depending on brand and use) festival-goers are going to need to charge their phones at least once a day. Research suggests that 67% of festival-goers recharged their phones at least once during a festival with 50% experiencing a completely dead battery at some stage.

Options for Festival-goers. 
Almost 60% of festival-goers use their own portable charger but depending on the brand and cost of the charging pack can have varying levels of reliability and are certainly bulky additional items to carry around a site. Not many festival-goers will be willing to leave their phone on charge in a tent whilst they are away. Most organisers now provide charging stations throughout a site and can be self-service or from charging specialists situated on a vendor pitch and 11% of festival-goers use these on-site charging services.

Charging Stations.
Festival organisers will usually accept vendor applications from one or more phone charging companies because they provide an essential service to all visitors. For anyone wanting their phone charged they can be assured that they can leave their phone in a secure location whilst it charges, however, the cost of these service can be expensive. An alternative may be to install self-service charging kiosks with secure lockers, however, these need to be rented or purchased and most are limited to 16 phones at any one time. Some on-site phone charging vendors also provide a temporary power bank rental service which visitors may find more convenient.

Alternative Charging Options.
As sustainability becomes more relevant festival-goers can explore new alternative ways to charge their phones. Solar powered charges have been around for some time, and many self-service charging stations use solar energy to produce power. The portable solar power charging products can be bulky and depending on the sunlight available may only provide a trickle charge. Hand crank phone charges are becoming more popular, however, the power generated by vigorous hand cranking will only ever be enough to power a phone to enable emergency calls and texting. These alternative powering solutions will no doubt develop in the future but for now remain too inefficient to provide anything more than a back-up solution.

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. 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
Stanley Ng via Pexels

Andy Robertson
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