Special Events: Profitable Or Painful ?

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Highlands John

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We have a number of special events around here, but I have to say that overall they can be more trouble than they're worth. They tend to be at weekends and during the busy season so as we're a small 3 room B&B they bring people in when we'd more than likely be fully booked anyway, so there's no gain.
And often they involve people coming and going at odd hours. For example, this weekend there was a big wedding at the castle down the road, hence house full of guests. The wedding wasn't until 3.30 so they all hang around the house until 2.30-3 pm so we can't clean the rooms. They came back at 2am and woke me up. Then one couple left at 5am for a flight and woke me up and then someone else left at 7am and woke me again. That left us with 1 for breakfast this morning who came down at 9.15 and said "After breakfast I'm going back to bed", at which dh pointed out check-out was 10.30.
Next weekend is l ochn essma rath on. That's not so much of an issue because normally it's in October (which is quieter) and people tend to come for several days for that, although this year they've moved it to sept for some reason.
Even the big music festival down the road involves people coming and going at all hours, although because its 30,000 people we do bump the prices up for that.
 
We have a festival every year that totally hems me in - I am downtown. The big rides of the carnival are across the street in front of me, the kiddie rides are in the parking lot to the east of me, and I am looking out at the back of the Skee ball trailer. My street is the midway for the games. IF I actually have guests, they must park at City Hall, there is no getting to my street of even my driveway.
I feel duty bound to inform guests this will be taking place. Most times it has resulted in a "we will book another time" that never happens. Last year there was a big football game at the university and 3 men came for the weekend for the game, they did not care. This year I had one lady during the week for one night here on business and for the weekend one lady here for a competition and she was gone all day so she was OK with it. Normally it is a zero revenue. The other festivals in the area get the hotels filled but usually they are more local people going to them. The BIG festivals fill the hotels, I rarely get any spill-over.
 
We are a conference and event town so pretty much have 1 or 2 events a week all year this weekend was a small one (500 people) for something to do with fishing but we have about 15 large wedding venues within 10 miles, 3 theatrs which seat 4,500 between them, the Harrogate International Center, Yorkshire Events center and 3 festivals (literature, crime and cultural) - to be blunt most of the local economy runs on events ie accommodation, restaurants and shops.
 
Festivals around here are more of a pain then anything else. Very rarely do we have a guest who has actually booked with us because of the festival. They're in the off season and on weekends, so we're booked anyway. We're far enough out of town it's not a big hassle for us, but it's also not a benefit either.
 
Festivals around here are more of a pain then anything else. Very rarely do we have a guest who has actually booked with us because of the festival. They're in the off season and on weekends, so we're booked anyway. We're far enough out of town it's not a big hassle for us, but it's also not a benefit either..
Our festivals are the right kind of festivals for BB type guests
ie Crime Festival - is authors coming for Q&A with fans, writing work shops those kind of activities - ie book people don't tend to be a rough crowd.
Raworths Literature Festival - Runs whole of July - lots of different authors and poets doing readings etc
Harrogate International Festival - tends to be classical music, comedy, getting kids into music, poetry, singing, opera that sort of thing and is for the whole of July.
We also have fab 1940's day on 16th of June 2013 (3rd year) attracted 12,000 people last year - DH and I have been co-opted to help with refreshments.
Don't want those noisy music type ones - not really my type of guests.
 
We don't seem to have a lot of festivals close enough by to bring in large amounts of traffic. When we have BIG events a few miles away the hotels will fill up. It's a rare event weekend when we have guests who even know the event is going on until they read about it on our 'things to do' board.
I'm always surprised when we get guests saying they're coming for the marathon or triathlon or mollusk fest or the big homarus americanus event.
One year we had a free concert in town by a band I'd never heard of that filled the house. It was like Phish or the Grateful Dead were in town the way these people were following them all across the country.
Right now, I've seen around 50 Model A's tooling by my house. Only 1 guest knew about the event before coming here. Wait, there go another 4 of them!
 
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