C.E.O. of the Discover Dominica Authority and Tourism Director, Colin Piper has highlighted the success of the just-concluded World Creole Music Festival (WCMF) 2016, at the World Travel Market now taking place in London.
During an interview at the event, he said the festival was “a great one for Dominica, specifically after not having one in 2015.”
Piper said that there were a lot of visitors coming in from the French Islands and also from abroad to Dominica for their favourite time of the year.
The A-List artistes that were organized, accompanied by the perfect weather paved the way for a smooth running event, he pointed out.
“It was a spectacular show,” he stated.
Piper explained that in the days leading up to the show, there was a surge of people heading to Dominica.
“We had four ferries coming in on Friday, which were completely filled up. For the week leading up to the event, we were monitoring the capacity of LIAT, WINAIR and Seaborne, all of which were pretty much filled up,” he revealed.
Piper went on to say that the WCMF is judged based on economic contribution and concluded that the festival generates between $4-$9 for every one dollar spent or invested in staging it.
“You could see that in terms of hotel rooms being booked out, rental car agencies being booked out, private homes being filled up, super market and grocery shelves were being depleted all for a good cause.” Piper affirmed.
He continued by saying that the government will be pleasantly surprised when the figures derived from the last weekend in October, including tax receipts, are being revised.
Piper reiterated that the team looks not on the profit levels of the event but rather the injection into the economic prosperity overall to Dominica and its people.
This year the local Bands out performed the internationals, look at the Extasy Band who came out late Sunday morning ppl waited and they hit ppl with originals and originals which hold. This is a Band Piper u need to invest in they will make Dominica proud.
I am happy to hear so many people came to island. Good job and keep up the good work.
How many people did come Shay? Give us the figure .
Congratulations to Leroy ‘Wadico’ ‘Wadix” Charles. You made a difference.
Rodolphe Lamy reported in France Antilles, from Martinique on 4 Nov, 2016. that the Festival was a very enjoyable one and quoted a figure of between 10, 000 and 15,000 revelers attending this event. Clearly this must be an estimate but even if we accept the higher figure, this is less than 3x of the number of cruise passengers that visited Dominica yesterday 9 Nov. As usual, there were quite a few VIP’s with free entry to the event and if we assume that 10,000 paid an average of $300, that would bring the total gross proceeds to $3 million. What were the expenses occurred in organising and hosting the event? I’d rather have more cruise ship passengers for my money, who are not noisy, more disciplined, do not cause anuisance and do not need subsidising. As I see it the only people benefiting right now are some big local businesses and hangers-on. Time to rethink this festival and let professionals run it with no cost to the public purse.
Mr. Piper finally getting serious. Keep it up.
How do you know? How many tickets did you sell for how much? Did you make a profit. I don’t want us to keep subsidizing that festival when independent organizers in other countries make a profit out of such events. How do we know you are not just boasting like Wadix.
TRUMP CAN BE A GOOD PRESIDENT WE NEED BUISNESS PEOPLE TO RUN THE AFFAIRS
this WAS THE BEST FESTIVAL SINCE AFTER THE FIRST WORLD CREOLE MUSIC FESTIVAL
Good….that is how you all have to run a festival…Keep the line-up fresh and hot. All now so you all have to book some big name artistes for next year.
Yep, WCMF keeps the hiking, scuba diving and nature loving independent travellers flooding in. Look around at this island and what tourism strategy springs to mind ? Parties, of course. It’s just so obvious! Congratulations. It’s really hard to get people enthused about a jump-up here. Well done.
Dean Martin, more people like to dance and party than to hike and scuba dive….Keep calm and jump up.
