Events like the Splash Festival, Specsavers Ironman, International Rugby, International Cricket, Boardwalk Hobie 16 Nationals, Weekend Post Ocean Racing Series and The Herald VW Cycle Tour are held not only to raise the profile of our city but also to attract ‘foreign’ money into our economy. The ONE way that we are going to grow our local economy is by attracting money from outside of our municipal boundaries into Port Elizabeth. Just stirring the dwindling available money around in the pot doesn’t really achieve anything.
As a staunch supporter of the Splash Festival I attempted this year to gauge the amount of ‘foreign’ money flow into our local economy by taking an, admittedly, unscientific measure of the number of bed nights sold by local accommodation owners as a DIRECT result of the Splash Festival.
This was done by posting a survey here: Port Elizabeth Splash Festival Accommodation Question and by sending e-mail questionnaires to 263 accommodation owners (see the questions that were posed at the bottom of the aforementioned article).
MyPE also asked the event organisers, Go Big, our local Municipal Communications Department and NMBT to comment.
We recieved 30 replies to our e-mail survey and 17 accommodation owners indicated in the online survey the number of bed nights sold as a direct result of people booking to go to the Splash Festival. NO large hotels replied to our survey – a pity as I personally know of people from Uitenhage who booked in a hotel for the duration of last year’s Splash Festival so I am thinking the same may have happened this year.
First off the accommodation results:
- Number of replies: 47
- Number of Bed Nights Sold: 98
These above bed night bookings were made specifically to see the Splash Festival and represent ‘foreign’ money. At 3 bed nights per person and a daily spend of R2 000.00 per person that represents a total ‘foreign’ inflow of R65 333.33 into our local economy.
If we err on the side of caution and say that the actual number of bed nights sold was SIX times the reported number at 588 bed nights (to allow for the 216 accommodation owners that didn’t reply) then 3 bed nights per person at a daily spend of R2 000.00 per person would represent a total ‘foreign’ inflow of R392 000.00 into our local economy.
Even at a generous estimate of R392 000.00 into our economy via the sale of bed nights the question STILL needs to be asked; “What is the tangible benefit to our local economy as a direct result of the Splash Festival?”
See all the articles in this series by clicking here #splashsurvey.
