Festival-goers' $16m spend-up in Tauranga
Festival-goers spent more than $16m in a matter of days while visiting Tauranga for the city’s two biggest music festivals. Tauranga businesses say the events — One Love and Bay Dreams — provided them with a massive financial boost and the city’s leaders say the festivals could play a major role in the recovery of local tourism post-covid-19.
Those visiting Tauranga for One Love 2020 and Bay Dreams 2019 spent more than $16m on accommodation, food and beverage items, retail, activities and transport services, and contributed a total of 109,482 visitor nights.
The net benefit of the events themselves — once costs had been considered — had pumped more than $9m into the local economy.
A post-evaluation report of Tauranga’s
One Love Festival released in June has found that, of the 20,797 people who attended this year’s twoday event, 17,996 were visitors to Tauranga who spent more than $7.2m in the city in less than three days.
Similarly, the latest report into Mount Maunganui’s Bay Dreams event released by Fresh Info, found of the 29,347 attendees in 2019, 26,802 had come from outside the region, and visitors spent more than $8.8m while in the city. A separate report was not completed for the 2020 event because of similar visitor numbers.
One Love is organised by Pato Alvarez, from Pato Entertainment, and Bay Dreams is run by Alvarez, together with Mitch Lowe, from Audiology.
Tauranga mayor Tenby Powell said the pair were bringing worldclass entertainment to the city, which was vital in its growing reputation as an “exciting event destination”.
“It’s always useful to see quantitative data on the value that events bring to our city. The owners of these events are Tauranga locals and it’s encouraging to see how their events have grown over the years – and I congratulate them on their success.”
He said events such as One Love, Bay Dreams and AIMS Games were
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