Music festivals recognised in Australian tourism awards

Image: Lisa Marie Williams / Getty

The role of music festivals in tourism was acknowledged in the Qantas Australian Tourism Awards held in Darwin last Friday.

In the Festivals and Events category, the National Folk Festival in Canberra took out Silver and the Parkes Elvis Festival in regional NSW took Bronze.

The winner of the category was Mount Isa Mines Rotary Rodeo.

Of the 46,109 who attended the National Folk Festival, 46% came from ACT, with 36% from NSW, 12% from Victoria, 3% from Queensland and 1% from the other states.

The Elvis Festival drew 22,000 last year and 25,000 this year to the town of Parkes, which has a population of 11,000, and had an economic impact of $11 million.

Also nominated in the category were Queenscliff Music (Victoria), Falls Music & Arts Marion Bay (Tasmania) and Sounds By The River (SA).

Nominees for the Major Festivals & Events category were Bluesfest Byron Bay and the Adelaide Cabaret Festival.

Bluesfest’s audience breakdown has 51% from interstate, 5% from overseas and 19% from Northern Rivers. In 2013, its economic impact was estimated at $64.1 million in Byron Shire, $84.2 million in the Northern Rivers region and $150.6 million in New South Wales. 

Adelaide Cabaret Festival draws 48,000 and is one of the 10 events under the Festivals Adelaide umbrella, which generated $210 million and drew 52,000 visitors to South Australia. (No specifics were available for the cabaret festival).

Australia has no formal research into music tourism, so there’s no indication of what role festivals play in it.

A report by APRA AMCOS, The Economic & Cultural Value of Live Music Australia 2014, found that on average 6% attendees at a music festival came from interstate and 1.7% from abroad. For regional festivals, on average half the crowd came from intestate.

To put that in perspective, single-day festivals generated a total of $106.83 million and multi-day festivals made $55.97 million in 2015, according to Live Performance Australia’s estimate released in December 2016. Australia’s live performance industry was valued at $1.41 billion. 

Music tourism plays a considerable role in festivals and other events in the United Kingdom. According to a UK Music report released in June 2016 called Wish You Were Here, music tourism generated £3.7 billion (up 7%) in total direct and indirect spend in 2015. There were 10.4 million music tourists in the UK in 2015, making up 38% of the entire live music audience. Overseas music tourism increased by 16% to 767,000 visitors that year, each spending an average of £852 (A$1384.50) during their stay.

Music tourists generated a £549 million ($872.14 million) box office spend on tickets in 2015. £38 million ($61.7 million) of which came from tickets bought by overseas music tourists. Of 8.4 million total live music audience in London, 3.2 million were music tourists.

At last Friday’s tourism awards in Darwin, AEG Ogden Chairman and Chief Executive Harvey Lister received the Australian Tourism Legend award. 

His award acknowledged the importance of conventions, events and entertainment to tourism.

In the past 30 years, entertainment, sports and convention venues managed by AEG Ogden delivered 30,000 major events.

Just one of these, the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, had over 21 years brought 14 million guests and added almost $4 billion to the Queensland economy.