Glastonbury is not going to take place in 2021 - another festival taking an enforced break due to Covid-19. This is not just a huge disappointment for festival-goers and performers - it’s also a crushing blow to the local economy. Glastonbury generates over £100m in revenue for the South-West of England, built on data which shows that, for every £10 spent on a ticket, £17 goes back into the local economy.

This is not just a ‘Glasto’ effect - even smaller festivals such as a 5,000 capacity event can expect to create in excess of £1m to the local area. It is therefore in the interests of thousands of peoples’ livelihoods that music festivals both return to life as soon as the pandemic allows, and that the experience they offer is seen to have ‘responded’ to newly evolving social norms.

Not all festivals have given up on 2021, with many hoping that the rollout of national vaccination programmes will allow venues to open, albeit perhaps with more limited capacities than their original event licence permitted.

“Covid-19 is enforcing better hygiene for all festival-goers, extending a trend from ‘elite-only’ status to being universal”

Obviously, any summer festival in 2021 will need to provide necessary Covid safety precautions such as anti-viral wipes and surfaces, cleaning systems and processes as well as air filtering for indoor spaces. Some are exploring the idea of rapid Covid testing before entry. Such measures though should be set in the context of the overall customer experience of the festival, rather than solely presented as a health and safety requirement. For example, the Isle Of Wight Festival in 1970 that originally squeezed in over half a million people to see the likes of Jimmy Hendrix and The Who now has barely 10 percent of that capacity for 2021. The venue now offers pre-pitched tents, pamper parlours, hot showers, luxury toilets - a world away from the crowded camping of the 1970s. Such comfort and convenience has provided enhanced cleanliness for a few years….at least for those willing to pay extra for it. Now, Covid-19 is enforcing better hygiene for all festival-goers, extending a trend from ‘elite-only’ status to being universal and even State-required.

What’s been driving the change in festival experience?

In part, this is down to demographics and competition. Both the festival-goers and the acts that perform there are ageing, although it's unclear whether one is the consequence of the other. More certain is that, with so many rival festivals springing up across Europe and the U.S., it's getting harder for promoters to lock in headline performers.

The result? The rise of 'challenger brand' festivals - typically smaller in attendance but perhaps more accommodating and empathetic as a result. Alongside the traditional music and arts events, this new breed of festival caters to a more family audience, looking for a holiday break experience for all ages and backgrounds. An example is the Latitude Festival in Suffolk - which, alongside main stage music, features yoga, lake swimming and a raft of family friendly features, including dedicated kids and teen areas.

Purists might scoff that such a trend towards a more considerate festival represents selling out its soul to a middle-class consumer unwilling to trade creature comforts for authenticity. But such a conclusion would be both harsh and out-of-date, even before Covid-19. Whilst the traffic jams, mud and squalor of Glastonbury living may be long established, that is no excuse for institutionalising a poor quality of experience.

These boutique festivals may be physically smaller, but this doesn’t limit their ambition. Standon-Calling expanded from what began as a birthday BBQ in a small Hertfordshire village in 2001 to a 10,000 capacity event in 2018. Yet it was as proud of its graffiti workshops for teenagers and Dog Show for families as it was for its music. Now with added hot tubs!

Leading By Experience

Just as caravan parks, theme parks and of course the Center Parcs phenomenon have improved facilities and activities to widen their appeal to family-friendly lifestyles, so consumer expectations are influencing how festivals are designed and run too.

The newcomer festivals are shifting the emphasis away from ‘endurance event’ towards an ‘immersive experience’, where visitors can throw themselves into new environments and activities without necessarily having to downgrade home comforts as a consequence.

HOWEVER, another trend of these challenger festivals is that they don't seem as resilient as the established venues. Despite being hugely popular, the Somersault Festival in Devon and the Secret Garden Party (SGP) in Hertfordshire both disappeared from the list in 2018. Somersault cited the impact on the land, whilst SGP seemed to be more about the organisers disliking the exponential growth of the event changing the atmosphere of the original concept.

Just as challenger festivals forced established ones to raise their game, so Covid-19 will do the same for all entertainment venues. This will of course be a requirement during the immediate aftermath of Covid-19, but we suspect that the experience benefit of enhanced hygiene will be here to stay. This has been seen before in the development of all-seater sports stadiums following the tragic deaths of people being crushed in terraces at football matches. The next generation of redesigned stadia typically had smaller capacities but far better safety and space considerations, which accommodated better provisions of toilets, bars, food outlets, and video screens around the venue (to reduce the need for mass crowds to return to their seats after half-time all at once).

Music festivals have steadily been moving towards a more relaxed and varied experience over the last 15 years. This has included a re-think not only of how they operate, but what they want their legacy to be.

And for other industries looking on, it’s yet another illustration of how aligning consumer trends with a wider customer journey can uncover fresh opportunities from untapped customer segments, even amidst the extreme conditions of a global pandemic.

If you are currently designing a festival experience for 2021/2, please get in touch to explore how we can help ensure its success. Contact us at: info@customerfaithful.com

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About Customer Faithful

Customer Faithful is a multi-disciplinary research consultancy, dedicated to highlighting unmet need in customer, patient and employee experience.

With team backgrounds in customer experience, clinical psychology and data analysis, we all bring the same level of focus - making qualitative insight as accessible as possible and delivering valuable research findings that are easy to apply. 

Our market research helps businesses to really understand what their customers want and need from organisations. We identify their experiences (great and not so great) to help our clients develop ideas that can drive sales, profit and retain their best people. 

We think that’s what all research providers should care about, but from what our clients tell us, most simply don’t!