Survey confirms visitors love Gore's country music festival
People who attend Gore’s annual festival of country music love it, according to a survey carried out by the Gore District Council during this year’s event.
With the news last week of the launch a new country music festival and a new trust to drive it, Gore is set to truly live up to its “NZ Capital of Country Music” title.
For the last two years the Council has surveyed attendees at the various existing country music events held over Queen’s Birthday weekend to get an idea of who is coming to Gore, why and what they think about it.
Overall feedback from the 2019 country music week was positive, with 98.4% rating their experience as very good, excellent or exceptional.
Based on 2,400 attendees over four days, the overall impact of the 2019 country music events, with direct and indirect spending included, is approximately $1 million into the Gore District economy.
The audience for the existing country music events is predominantly people aged over 65, from Otago and Southland, and travelling as a couple or group. Visitors aged 45 to 54 years made up 10%; those aged 45 to 54 years made up 23%; and 20% were aged between 55 and 64 years.
The average length of stay for visitors is three to four nights and most stay with family or friends. That partly reflects Gore’s limited accommodation capacity. In 2019, 15 percent of visitors stayed in motorhomes.
Canterbury visitors made up 10% of respondents, which suggests an area to target in future marketing.
The clear anchor event of the existing event offering is the MLT NZ Gold Guitar Awards senior final. Almost 90% of survey respondents attended that event. All events were equally popular amongst locals and visitors.
Overwhelmingly most of those surveyed were return visitors (either as participants or spectators), so clearly there is a loyal following. The majority of survey respondents said they were in Gore specifically for the country music events.
Word of mouth is important in finding out about the festival, and it was clear social media had an impact on visitation in the up to 55 year age group.
2019 Gore Country Music Festival survey report [PDF, 946 KB]
Press Release - 2020 New Zealand Country Music Festival announced [PDF, 163 KB]
