Editorial: Reggae festival should stay put

Rotorua has been a worthy host to Raggamuffin over several years. Photo / Ben Fraser

Our front page yesterday featured a bit of a double-whammy: the good news - a survey shows strong Rotorua support for Easter trading in the city; the bad news - Raggamuffin's promoter says he's taking the festival out of Rotorua and moving it to Auckland.

Both stories could have huge implications for our visitor trade in the first half of the year.

The Raggamuffin issue in particular shapes up to be a huge blow to our city.

Promoter Andrew McManus says the annual reggae musical festival will no longer be held in Rotorua, blaming a poor turnout this year and a lack of support from locals.

That's hard to accept when there are many reasons people choose whether to attend the event or not.

Raggamuffin is a fantastic, enjoyable summer event, but if you want to get people through the gate you need to make it worth their while. That means looking at ticket price, format (ie one-day or two days) and line-up (this year's headliners included Shaggy - again - and Damian Marley) among other things.

Maybe an extra big-name act or two would force up the cost of staging the festival, but ideally you'd make it back in increased ticket sales.

It would be interesting to see how the same event staged in Auckland would go, with the same line-up as this year, with the same ticket prices and the same proximity to other reggae events - factors this year's festival faced.

Rotorua has been a worthy host to Raggamuffin over several years - it simply makes sense to locate the festival here.

Yes, Auckland is a bigger market, but this is the home of Raggamuffin and anything elsewhere just wouldn't be the same.

As I wrote earlier this year, Raggamuffin is not just an event - it's a destination. It is not just a concert - it's a weekend away in an activities and events capital. Raggamuffin anywhere else in New Zealand would be a different and, quite frankly, inferior event.