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We've just had our fourteenth Bermuda Music Festival. By now, we should know if they are successful, and if there are specific pointers to success or clear indicators of failure. I believe that indicators do exist, and that it is time that Bermuda paid them some attention.

As far as I know, the festival was intended to be a mechanism for attracting additional leisure visitors during the shoulder season; not for entertaining resident Bermudians. 

Do the Bermuda Music Festivals attract a substantial and additional number of leisure visitors? In the best year - 2008, when Beyonce was here - the festival reportedly attracted fewer than 3,000 additional leisure visitors and sustained a loss of about $3.5m. No other music festival has done as well in attracting leisure visitors. All have done worse. In fact, if the Tourism Ministry reported honestly, they would probably tell us that for the whole 14-year period, they do not know - and cannot tell - just how many leisure visitors came to Bermuda especially for the festival (in any of its guises).

I reckon that taken together, all 14 festivals have attracted fewer than a 14-year aggregate total of 40,000 leisure visitors who came to Bermuda specifically for the festival.

Do Bermudians attend? Yes. And Bermudians pay twice. First payment is when - as taxpayers - they pay to fund the event. Second payment is when they pay to attend. So Bermudians get neither a cheap seat nor a free show.  Bermudians get a twice-paid for show. For Bermudians, the festivals have been a money spinning process.

Overhanging all of this is a huge question. Why would an American pay the huge premium of $500 for a plane ticket, $500 a day for meals and accommodation, and $500 or so at the festival - simply to see homegrown American artistes who regularly perform in the U.S. or who regularly appear on U.S. TV?  Why?

It seems to me that the basic concept of putting American artistes on a Bermuda stage in order to attract America leisure visitors to Bermuda is fundamentally flawed. It is a concept with little chance of achieving its marketing objective - getting a substantial number of additional American leisure visitors to Bermuda in the shoulder season.  In this context, 3,000 additional leisure visitors is not a substantial number - as was proven in 2008. And we've done that sort of thing 14 times in a row.

If Bermuda is to continue doing music festivals, we have to re-focus on our objectives.

If the objective is to get in additional leisure visitors, then the festivals must be - need to be - different enough so that Americans and others are willing to spend a minimum $2,500 premium so that they can come to Bermuda and see and enjoy things that they cannot ordinarily experience in America.  

That means that Bermuda must present something that is completely different to what Bermuda has actually presented over the past 14 years.

So what can be presented? What would be different?

Edinburgh Festival

Why not turn the festival into a showcase for international acts? Why not make it the mid-Atlantic medium that regularly brings in fresh musicians from Africa... or from Eastern and central Europe... or the Middle East ...

I went to my first Edinburgh Festival in the 1970s. I went back with my family in the 1980s. My wife and I went back in 2003. That is three visits.

The Edinburgh Festival is a showcase for the world. The city is jam-packed for all of August and Princess Street and a plethora of other streets and halls and clubs and warehouses are alive with frenetic activity. The shops are full of shopping shoppers. Eateries are always packed with people. The pubs?  Well....

I think we have befuddled and muddled and hyped long enough with the Bermuda Music Festival. It is time for some honest evaluations and honest information. It is time to make some real and fundamental changes.

Either make the kind of changes I've mentioned or be honest and scrap this expensive boondoggle that purports to be a tourist attractor, but in reality has never been anything more than a twice-paid-for, and inordinately expensive party for twice-paying locals.[[In-content Ad]]

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