Organising and running a festival takes months of planning, preparation and promotion. After all that effort, having to cancel or dealing with low attendance can be disheartening. However, with some strategic management, you can handle these situations gracefully and even turn them into opportunities. This article provides tips on managing festival cancellations and low turnouts. Having a plan in place makes navigating these challenges much easier.
If you must cancel your festival, the first step is letting everyone know as soon as possible. This includes all registered attendees, vendors, performers, sponsors, volunteers and local authorities. Use event cancellation letter templates to create notices that provide details on the cancellation and any refund policies. Email these notices to your attendee list and post them prominently on your festival website and social media pages. For vendors, performers and sponsors, call them personally to inform them. Offer to return any deposits and discuss potential future collaborations to soften the blow. Prompt communication demonstrates respect for all involved.
Once you’ve announced the cancellation, start processing refunds right away per your refund policy. For online ticket sales, most event management platforms have tools to handle cancellations and refunds smoothly. For other payments, issue refunds via check, bank transfer, gift cards or the original payment method. Having an efficient and timely refund process shows your attendees that you value them and encourages future engagement. Make sure refunds are complete well before the original festival dates. Honouring refund policies builds trust with your customers.
Your festival likely relied on volunteers to help with operations, logistics and setup. Even though it’s cancelled, take the time to thank them for their willingness to help. Send them notes expressing your gratitude. To encourage future volunteer sign-ups, consider providing incentives like free tickets to next year’s festival, coupons to local businesses, or donations to charities of their choice. Recognising volunteers' efforts maintains goodwill.
If your festival proceeds but has lower than expected attendance, thoroughly analyse the possible reasons after the event wraps up. Compare your actual turnout to attendance goals and look for shortfalls. Some common reasons for low festival turnout include limited or ineffective marketing, competition from other events, high ticket prices, unappealing entertainment lineup, and bad weather and other external factors. Identifying where your festival strategy fell short allows you to improve for future editions. Conducting a detailed post-event analysis provides factual insights.
Visitor feedback provides valuable insights into attendance issues. Use online surveys to ask about attendees' experiences and satisfaction levels. Key questions to ask: How did they hear about your festival? What prompted them to attend? How satisfied were they with the entertainment, activities, vendors, etc? What can be improved at future festivals? Make the surveys concise and offer incentives for participation, like prize drawings. Review the feedback to see what your festival did well at and what needs work. Getting direct input from attendees helps pinpoint strengths and weaknesses.
If surveys and analysis point to marketing as an attendance growth area, devote more time and budget to promoting next year's festival. Widen your outreach to new demographics and regions. Increase digital marketing via social media campaigns, YouTube ads, email newsletters, and website content. Strategically place print ads and flyers locally and in nearby cities. Pitch stories to media outlets to gain added exposure. When marketing, highlight the most popular aspects of this year's festival that survey respondents raved about. Investing in marketing lays the groundwork for future success.
Price can be a barrier to festival participation. Providing discounted tickets for early registrations incentivises sign-ups. Provide special savings like 20% off passes purchased 60+ days pre-event. Limit quantities to create urgency. Early bird pricing gives you an attendance estimate well ahead of time so you can adjust plans and boost marketing if needed. Early bird ticket deals encourage commitment to attend.
Cancellations and low attendance may seem like festival failures initially. But by following smart management strategies, you can recover well and turn these situations into valuable learning experiences. Being proactive with communications, refunds, feedback collection and marketing improvements will help your festival bounce back stronger. With resilience and strategic thinking, your event can overcome challenges and build momentum for years to come. Staying positive and focused on growth sets you up to thrive down the road.
