City says it got it wrong on festival

CITY leaders today admitted a string of blunders were behind the poor turn-out at the International Festival of the Sea in Edinburgh this year.

Poor marketing, expensive ticket prices and the shabby state of the arena for the event have all been blamed for four-day extravaganza held in May at the Port of Leith into a flop.

Council officials who have had to explain why taxpayers were hit with a £650,000 bill to bail-out the festival admitted too many people enjoyed the event for free from the waterfront shopping complex, Ocean Terminal.

Less than 50,000 people paid up to £15 a head to attend the event, despite expectations that it would attract upwards of 125,000.

As a result it generated just £4 million for the local economy - around £6m less than had been hoped for when it was announced the festival was coming to Scotland for the first time.

The city council had agreed to underwrite the event to the tune of £150,000 on top of £500,000 of payments from Scottish Enterprise Edinburgh and Lothian.

The Scottish Executive and VisitScotland, the national tourism agency, had also stumped up £100,000 each to help pay for the £2m cost of staging the event. A steering group involved in organising of the event, staged by a private company, has spent months analysing what went wrong.

In his report for the council, city development director Andrew Holmes said that although the cost of tickets compared favourably with previous festivals, there was a perception the price was too high.

He revealed the steering group had original proposed setting the price at a maximum of £12 but had "reluctantly" decided to increase it by £3 because of increased costs involved in staging the event and a failure to attract enough sponsorship.

He said the event had suffered in comparison with the Tall Ships Race in Leith eight years ago because that had been free.

Mr Holmes said the extensive marketing of the festival through TV, radio and bus shelter advertising had "failed to get over the message clearly on what visitors could expect at the event, particularly as it was new to Edinburgh. This may have influenced perceptions on ticket priced."

He added: "On the weekend of the festival Ocean Terminal experienced a high increase in visitor numbers, which resulted in up to 70,000 potential visitors to the festival being able to view the event from various areas within the centre, including the car parks, without paying the entry fee.

"Ocean Terminal achieved this by targeted marketing and providing additional entertainment within the centre, including offering free car parking."

Mr Holmes said building work on part of the site initially earmarked for the festival had resulted in the actual event arena being "disjointed" and it was more difficult than originally planned for visitors to get around.

Mr Holmes highlighted previous reasons spelled out by Festival Management Limited for the failure of the event, including the costs of bringing it to Scotland and the outbreak of the war in Iraq just weeks before the festival was staged.

Peter Workman, a director of the private company, the International Festival of the Sea Ltd, today insisted that visitors to the festival had received value for money.

"There’s no doubt we were hit by the Tall Ships Race factor, which we didn’t know how much it was going to affect us.

"There was also no way we could have justified charging anything less than £15 a head. I firmly believe those who came had value for money, it was the people who didn’t come that felt they wouldn’t get value for money."

The enterprise body today defended its investment, declaring it had delivered "significant" economic benefit to the area.

A study commission by SE Edinburgh and Lothians found that bars and restaurants benefited to the tune of £470,000, with shops earning around £206,000. Paul Lewis, executive director with SE Edinburgh and Lothians, said: "The study we commissioned shows the festival delivered significant economic benefit, despite the lower than hoped for attendance."