More than 44,000 attended Winter Festival
MORE than 44,000 people attended this year’s Queenstown Winter Festival, official data shows.
The festival, held between June 21 and 24, used Qrious to gather unique attendance figures using cellphones.
Festival director Rae Baker said only cellphone users were counted, so children or people without cellphones were not included in the numbers.
Visitors were counted only once and had to stay within Earnslaw Park and Marine Parade for more than 30 minutes before being counted.
Qrious did not collect data from any other site, for example Brecon St where a Rail Showdown was held, or Cardrona, the mountain venue for this year’s festival.
Ticket sales were also not included in the numbers.
‘‘Therefore, we know that the figures we collate via Qrious are lower than actual attendance,’’ Ms Baker said.
‘‘However, they are much more accurate than manually clicking people in and out of festival sites.’’
This year’s data showed 44,800 unique visitors were counted at the site over the four days and more than 13,000 attended the fireworks on the Friday night.
Throughout the festival, 42% were ‘‘local’’ residents, 41% were domestic visitors and 17% were international visitors.
Of the New Zealand attendees, 58.8% of those counted came from the Otago region and 14.4% came from Auckland.
Canterbury visitors comprised 11.5%, Southlanders accounted for 6.4% and 9% of the visitors had come from other regions in New Zealand.
Of the international visitors, 47.2% were from Australia.
The festival generated $1.25 million of ‘‘earned media’’ online alone.
That was media which had a dollar value attached to it, or what the festival would have paid to get that amount of coverage.
The festival also had a reach of more than 89 million people between April 1 and July 10.
Ms Baker said the festival was ‘‘truly unique’’ and a massive asset to the resort.
‘‘Anything that’s got an event of this size, that can shout this loudly about their unique place is hugely valuable.
‘‘Just like Running of the Bulls, the New Orleans Mardi Gras, the Munich Oktoberfest or the Rio Carnival, the Real Journeys Queenstown Winter Festival reflects its unique place and its diverse community, our vibrancy and our sense of fun and adventure, showcasing it to the world while creating belonging for our community.
‘‘We belong to Queenstown and we showcase Queenstown — we will never be anything else.’’
Next year the festival will celebrate its 45th anniversary, dates for which are yet to be announced, and Ms Baker said planning was already under way.
‘‘We know we’re going to be pulling out the stops.
‘‘It’s all about Queenstown and our locals celebrating themselves and their environment, and we’re inviting visitors to come and celebrate with us.’’