Beer Festival Asia
Introduction
Beer Fest Asia is a yearly event in which people come to taste different kind of beers under one roof from all over the world. It not only offers different kind of beers for people to taste but it also allows people to do that while enjoying exciting performances by famous band like vertical horizon and hells belles.
Marketing Strategies
Beer Fest Asia uses a few different marketing strategies as part of their marketing mix. They use price bundling, promotions and band performances to attract visitors to the event. These strategies affect some of the 8Ps. They are Price, Promotion, Programme.
They use price bundling to bundle up several different things like ticket to Singapore flyer, beer runner service, and special seats reserved in the main marquee together with the ticket to beer fest. This is for the hospitable tickets only.
As for promotions, there is concession pricing for students, SAFRA members and NSF people, discounts when you purchase tickets in bulk or with Citibank credit card holder, Citibank clear platinum card holders.
There are bands such as vertical horizon, hells belles and many more local bands performing at the event as part of their event. This helps to bring in the local as well as international music lovers crowd. It is a perfect opportunities for them to be able to taste 100+ different kinds of beer as well as be able to see their favourite bands perform.
Another of the 8Ps they used is the Location. Beer Fest Asia purposely chose Singapore flyer for one simple reason which is that it is located in a very scenic place.
Big Beer Festival
Introduction
A similar event of Beer Fest Asia is the Big Beer Festival Belgians & Barley wines. This event is held at the scenic rocky mountain of Colorado in USA in the Vail Marriott Mountain Resort & Spa. It offers more than 175 different beers from around the world, a brew master’s dinner hosted by world acclaimed brew masters, a home brewing competition and seminars.
Difference in Marketing Strategies between Beer Fest Asia and Big Beer Festival
The difference is the marketing channels and the marketing promotions. The marketing channels used for advertising is wider in the Big Beer Festivals as they not only have their own website they also have other websites to advertised their event websites such as the beer festival calendar and PlumTv.
The first website is very useful in that people from all over the world who attends the beer fest every year as well as the brew masters will be informed of your event. PlumTv is a video site and is similar to that of a real Tv but the coverage is much higher. With this two website the event is able to attract a bigger market segment as well as a specialised market segment such as the brew masters of the beer brewery.
The sales promotions used by Big Beer Festival are packages. They have different packages to cater to different people such as single event tickets, event pass, traditional package and full event package. All of this however only comprises of the event itself only.
Beer Fest Asia’s package offers more than just the event itself. They allowed event goers to be able to enjoy many other things such as the Singapore flyer, beer runner service and etc.
Of the 8Ps, Location was the one that both event organisers had agreed that it must be in a scenic place. As such, Singapore flyer was the place for Beer Fest Asia and the ski resort in the mountain also selected for Big Beer Festival.
The difference in marketing strategies is because different purpose of the event leads to different target market and thus the marketing strategies is different. Big Beer Festival is catered to the upper crust of the society of beer lovers and brew masters while Beer Fest Asia is catered to the ordinary people like you and me.
Best Practices
They are:
À Price Bundling
À Promotions
À Entertainment
À New Media
Price Bundling
Price bundling is to bundle up different products and sell it together at a special price. This makes it hard for competitors to guess the price make-up of the different products and it is more worthwhile and attractive to the buyer.
Promotions
Promotions are special discounts/rates given to special groups of event goers who fulfil certain criteria of the promotions. Example of such is the Citibank credit card member and students. This can be used in many different ways to make the event organiser’s job easier and lower the influence of price as a deterrence factor to possible event goers. It can make event organiser’s job easier thru the use of early bird promotions. This helps to encourage attendees to purchase their tickets early and allow management to be able to get a better estimation of how many attendees will be at the event.
Entertainment
Entertainment such as band performances can help to reduce boredom and add the X factor to the event.
New Media
New Media is actually internet. It is a very useful and important tool to any event. It is able to provide a platform for event goers to be able to find out information, buy tickets, contact event management and it gives people a sense of confidence in many different ways. Some ways is it allows people to buy tickets and be assured that they are not being tricked; another is if they ever need information like the event venue they will be able to find out no matter where they are in the world with an internet connection. It lets them know that the event has make every effort to inform them about the events, purpose, venue etc.
Without this, people might not be able to know where the event is held and they might just get into a flustered on the day itself should they not be able to find it. An example is Beer Fest Asia this year. There was not must signage around Singapore flyer so for those who came in from the front of Singapore flyer and cannot see the marquee may be going around looking for it.
Stakeholders
The stakeholders are:
® Host Organisation
® Host Community
® Sponsor
® Media
® Co-workers
® Participants and Spectators
Host Organisation
Host organisation is the company that is caused the event to be created or generated.
Host Community
Host community is the community/shops/residents/hotels in the vicinity of event itself.
Sponsor
Sponsors are either companies/rich individual/social group or even government. They support the event by kind or financially.
Media
Media provides coverage for the event thru different channels. Media mainly give TV and newspaper coverage only. There are however some that is able to give coverage thru the use of internet as well. A good example is Channel News Asia as their articles are not just published on paper but also online.
Co-workers
Co-workers is the event team assembled to organise and carry out the event.
Participants and Spectators
Participants and Spectators are the event goers.
Beer Fest Asia’s Stakeholders
Host organisation: Beerfest Pte Ltd
Host community: Marina Square, Singapore Flyer, Esplanade, millennia hotel, pan pacific hotel etc.
Sponsor: Citibank, absolute vodka, Singapore flyer, grand park hotel, timbre music, B-YOND, DAS, etc
Media: Time Out Singapore magazine, FHM, Power98FM, hungrygowhere.com
Co-workers: Singha, as well as all the different beer companies who work with them to sell beers
Main Purpose of Beer Fest Asia
There are many reasons why Beer Fest Asia was held however the main purpose and reason for Beer Fest Asia is to introduce the Beer drinking culture into Singapore.
Tourism Benefits of Singapore
The amount of tourism benefits received by the host city varies as there is several variation of how to calculate the benefits and it is hard to be very accurate and is known to be estimated only.
In my opinion the tourism benefits on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest, I would give it a 6.
If I was to compare the scale of the event to that of a mega event it is relatively small and thus the benefits and tourist that it can attract is significantly lower. However, we have to take into consideration that the event is a few days and according to the statistics of the beer fest website there is an estimated 14,000 people.
It is quite a fair amount of people who went for the event, however we are not able to ascertain exactly how many of these people are tourist.
Thus I used my own estimation based on the amount of foreigners that I saw on the day of my visit.
Another reason of why it’s a 6 even though there are so few people is that the beer fest only starts at night everyday so during the day tourist will be around Singapore exploring and spending. There is a lot more tourist spinoff per person for this event. As they not only need food & beverage, accommodation and transport but also entertainment during the day itself.
Conclusion
This event was very successful and I enjoyed myself attend this event though I’m not a huge fan of beer. I would give this event a total rating of 8/10 for entertainment factor. It was really fun and interesting and I learn a lot from the event.
Rating of event: 8/10
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References
Beer Fest Asia
http://www.beerfestasia.com/index.php
Beer Festival Calendar
http://www.beerfestivals.org/calendar/january.html
Big Beer Festival
http://www.bigbeersfestival.com/beer_festival_tickets.htm
PlumTv
http://www.plumtv.com/
Beer consumption per capita in UK
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_beer_consumption_per_capita
