Representatives from the music festivals Canet Rock, Vida, Berdache, Vallviva, and Share took part in the roundtable discussion “Music Festivals: viewpoints from marketing and tourism” held at IQS as part of the Operational Marketing subject in the Undergraduate Programme in Tourism and Hospitality Management.
Representatives from the music festivals Canet Rock, Vida, Berdache, Vallviva, and Share took part in the roundtable discussion entitled “Music Festivals: viewpoints from marketing and tourism” held at IQS as part of the Operational Marketing subject in the Undergraduate Programme in Tourism and Hospitality Management.
Moderated by Daniela Freund, a professor of the 3rd year subject, as well as by three students, the debate featured Mireia Morera, an Alumna of the Undergraduate Programme in Tourism and Hospitality Management and director of Vallviva; Gemma Recoder, director of Canet Rock; Daniel Poveda, director of the Vida Festival; Elisabet Parés, director of Berdache; and Stefano Maccarone, director of Share Festival.
The discussion focused on understanding the most notable marketing activities, delving deeper into sustainable practices, and determining the festival’s impact on the city beyond merely understanding festivals as a business.
The Vallviva festival is a charitable endeavour, donating the money raised to different foundations that fight against specific diseases. Located in Olot, “we strive to innovate and create experiences, as well as to connect with the local people,” the former IQS student assured, who added that the festival “seeks greater recognition, not a larger audience.”
The Berdache festival emerged at the end of 2019 to fill a gap in diversity in Hospitalet de Llobregat. “How can it be that the second largest city in Catalonia doesn’t have a festival to celebrate LGBTI pride?” its creators asked. Parés has explained that the festival “transforms that pride into art.”
The Vida festival, meanwhile, has managed to ensure that its audience will buy the tickets a year in advance without even knowing the line-up: “The best marketing is when someone chooses your product and posts it on their social media” claims Daniel Poveda, who added that they have worked intensely on the market segment attending the event.
Along these lines, Canet Rock does no press promotion, as they don't represent the target audience, but rather “we do business through social media,” notes Gemma Recoder. “Our audience is our best advocate,” she concludes.
The director of Share Festival, which allows the public to make charitable donations during the festival, has a different opinion. For Maccarone “things work when you’re present in many sites, if you only spend your budget online, you might miss out on sales. We generate a lot of sales when the artists participating in the festival announce that they will be attending.”
Crowd management, recycling, sustainability, the environmental footprint, and inclusion were other topics discussed during the roundtable event, with the more than 40 students from the Undergraduate Programme in Tourism and Hospitality Management who attended.