Top acts pulling out, queuing problems and collapsing stage tents, the list of problems that plagued the music festival Zoo8 seemed endless – but festival organisers say that this will not stop them from staging Zoo9.
Ricardo Monty, from Wildlife Music Events, said: “We have learnt many, many lessons but I suppose if we had to single out a few I’d say to plan in much more detail, plan for the unexpected and increase the size of contingency budgets. We have most certainly learnt where our strengths and weaknesses are.”
Disappointed music fans immediately went on to websites to make complaints and some top performers failed to show because of payment issues. Top act Ash only went on after they were paid by the management of Port Lympne Wild Animal Park, who where letting the show happen in their grounds.
Other complaints were about overflowing toilets, a lack of showers and drinking water and poor security.
But the organisers say that next year the event will be a better experience for music fans and for the acts booked to play.
Mr Monty said: “We are in negotiations with a number of industry experts to help plan for Zoo9. We will be offering a discount package for all VIP customers who attended Zoo8 to go to Zoo9.”
They also denied that they had been too ambitious staging such a large event the first time round.
Mr Monty said: “That’s a point of view some might have, but we have leant to be more prepared now. We don’t plan to scale back the size of the festival at this stage. We have had many people say they had a great time and give us some constructive criticism too which is great.
"All the management have read all the letters and emails we have received and we will certainly be taking on board what people say.”
They also say that the media reaction concentrated too much on the negative aspects of the show and that the festival scene is a tough market to succeed in.
He added: “We accept we do deserve some criticism. Labelling the whole event a shambles is simply not reasonable in our opinion. There’s been plenty of first year festivals around the country that have done much worse than us and there were three that had the plug pulled that were due to take place on the same weekend.
“Kent not being the most populated part of the country it is hard place to hold such a large scale event and get 12,000 people at peak attendance and sell 17,000 tickets first time around. Speculation that we lost £1million is pie in the sky. We did make a minor loss, but the event did generate a huge turnover.”
Will you attend Zoo9? Or are you once bitten twice shy? Let us know your views. Email: yourashford@kosmedia.co.uk or leave a comment below.
POSTED: 27/07/2008 21:00:00
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