Music Festival Accommodation Planning for Artists.

One of the keys to successful accommodation planning for music festival organisers is being able to offer a variety of accommodation with a range of budgets. With many festivals being quickly sold out it is also vital that accommodation for artists is secured early in the process to ensure availability. 

Festival goers come from a wide range of ages and demographics and this is reflected in the variety of accommodation typical booked. Data from Statista a few years ago indicates the type of accommodation used can be broken down as follows:    

• Camper van 3.8 %.
• Bringing and staying in their own tent 40.6%.
• Staying in a local hotel 30.9%.
• Onsite VIP and Glamping 2.5%.
  

It is clear form this data that a large percentage (31%) of event goers choose to stay at a local hotel. As the majority of artists are unlikely to be staying onsite it is vital that event organisers source and block book local hotel accommodation early in the planning process.

For a larger festival that has in excess of 300 artists this can be a challenge, it’s vital to establish at an early stage in the planning process how many rooms will be required and the total number of people, which will of course exceed 300 once crew and artist’s support staff are included. For such a large event it makes sense to have a dedicated accommodation manager who can source and negotiate with all the local hotels to make provisional group bookings. Once this stage is completed the accommodation manager should offer the range of accommodation to artists and obtain confirmed booking as early as possible including the number of rooms along with dates required including check in and check out times. Once all the accommodation booking details are confirmed they will be included in the artist's advance sheet.

This artist accommodation process should ideally be completed before event tickets go on sale to the general public. Once tickets go on general sale it is likely that event goers are going to start booking all the available space at nearly hotels.

As some artist bookings can change is it essential for the accommodation manager to provisionally over book the number of rooms required as a contingency for last minute additions and changes. So much of the festival logistics planning hinges on artist accommodation bookings, particularly the transfer transport. Organisers must be able to plan hotel transfer services to get artists from airports to hotels and to get them from the hotel to the festival site and back again. 

Using an events software management platform like FestivalPro music festival event organisers get all the functionality they need to manage artist accommodation. 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 FestivalPro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features for managing every aspect of booking accommodation. Provisional hotel bookings can be logged and customised invitations to each artist can be made by email. Bookings are logged automatically and organisers can monitor progress to check which artists have not yet booked their accommodation preference. All accommodation and transfer bookings can be analysed by dates and times for every artist with dynamic calendars for quick status overviews. 

Data courtesy of Statista

Photo by David McBee from Pexels

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