Beer Festival Asia 2009

Sunday, June 21, 2009

INTRODUCTION

Beer Fest Asia is the largest beer festival in Asia. This festival is a perfect opportunity for everyone to try more than 100 beers from all over the world. It can range from the usual beers that can be found anywhere in Singapore to some unaware brands that can’t be found in Singapore. It will be held at the Singapore flyer and it will be a 5-day event which operates from the afternoon till midnight. Fantastic entertainment by world-class bands and other fun filled activities on and off stage. Popular Singaporean bands will be performing throughout the entire festival exclusively at Beer Fest Asia, accompanied by arm wrestling tournaments, games and classic festival activities.

10:19 PM

Beer Fest Asia

VERSUS

Great International Beer Festival

Great International Beer Festival is America’s largest international beer festival. It is held twice yearly at the same convention centre, which is Rhode Island Convention Centre. Most of their beers can be locally found in America, if not overseas. There will be unlimited sampling, food and entertainment to be enjoyed by all visitors.

Product
The core product for Beer Fest Asia is mainly to taste over 100 different beers from all over the world under one roof. It is a beer haven that will leave visitors to experience new beers or their own usual brands of beer. Some facilitating products are like the flyer experience, brochures, websites, food, games and live band entertainment. For the augmented product, there are toilets, benches and chill out area for visitors’ usage.

While the core product for the Great International Beer Festival is an exhibition of the different beers from America and they will be able to taste it. They do have facilitating product which is food and live band music and shows. The augmented products are toilets, hotels and motels for guests who come from other states.

Partnerships
For Beer Fest Asia, they do charge the vendors rental fee and its equipment provided, so it is not a free of charge exhibit. Thus, a beer brewer wants to hold a booth, they will be charge certain amount of money in order to promote their beers. Also, there are Medias, Sponsors, Singapore GP, Singapore flyer and Singapore tourism board partnering well with Beer Fest Asia.

While the Great International Beer Festival do not require any rental fee because they want to attract more brewers to gather in the exhibition. Thus, attracting more customers too as there is more variety of beers. In addition, Medias, Sponsors are partnering well with the America Beer Fest.

Place
In Singapore, the location of the beer fest is at the F1 track below the Singapore Flyer, which is an attraction. The event is held under a large tent with a few marquees and ample spaces that could take up to more than 1000 guests under one roof. The Singapore Flyer is near to the city hotels too so it’s convenient to the foreigners. But the area is not very convenient for the locals as there is no public transport directly in front of the attraction, thus, there is a certain distance to walk so that to be able to take the public transport.

While in America, the location of the Great International Beer Festival is at the Rhode Island Convention Centre, Providence with 40,000 square metres space which is a better place for events like these. It is convenient for guests from other states to come as the area is near to the hotels surrounding. They also provide directions for the locals too to ease their way to the festival.

Promotion
Singapore promotes Beer Fest Asia via magazines, print advertisements, street banners, editorial, Singapore Flyer, Singapore Tourism Board (STB), main website, radio station and advertisements via its official sponsors. Also, through this event, it helps to promote the Singapore GP for the Formula 1 race that is going to be happening in September.

On the other hand, America promotes Great International Beer Festival via main website, Rhode Island ongoing communication mix, YouTube and advertisements via its official sponsors. This event also has repercussions on the surrounding commercialised areas.

Programming
Beer Fest Asia is a 5-day ongoing event with different opening hours. But the programs are very rich as they engage many different live bands from the locals as well as overseas too. There are also local DJ Jensen Ho from Power 98 radio station and DJ Samurai. Not only they have live band to entertain the guests, they also have games such as pool, arm wrestling, air hockey, foosball and pinball machines. They do have some pole dancing or hip dancing competition between the different booth beer girls on stage and it’s interesting to see how they flaunt their figures in their moves.

Great International Beer Festival is a 1-day event only so the programme is quite limited. As a result, they have 2 local live bands to perform, one in the afternoon session and the other in the evening session. But these 2 bands are really good and famous as they do produce track records and concerts round the country, so they are actually no difference from pop stars singers.

Packaging & distribution
The beer fest in Singapore is package with the Singapore Flyer. So there is a flight package of tickets on the Singapore Flyer with complimentary gifts, since it is held below the Singapore flyer. Also, Citibank card holders are entitled to have discounts as Citibank is the official credit card for the event. Tickets could be bought online or on the spot. Tickets will be collected on the day itself, if it is bought online. There are also concessions for tertiary students, early bird customers, bulk ticket sales and complimentary drinks for normal ticket holders. All the ticket sales online are in collaboration with bytes ticketing, which is the intermediaries for the event.

In America, the beer fest tickets could be bought online too, and they distribute their tickets thru mailing if it is bought before a certain date, after the date, they will collect the ticket on the spot on the event day itself. Also they will sell their tickets on the day itself too.

People
Backstage Crew and production is Experts Company that helps the event organiser to set-up and made the event a success. Also, they do have event organisers to run the event. Vendors and participants played a big role too.

In Singapore, there are many people who are involved in this event. Mainly those staff volunteers that are facilitating the event which we also known them as “part-timers” are mostly recruited from the agency called Recruit Express. Within a short period of time, the event organiser need to reach out for workers instantly, so Recruit Express does the job for them. The beer girls are the ones that are either recruited from recruit express, if not from the beer company itself. Local beer companies recruit beer girls are usually local models, such as FHM cover page models. Overseas company also do recruit either local beer girls or overseas beer girls, for example, Singha do have beer girls from the western.

Western Beer Girl

A worker from recruit express

In America, they definitely do have beer girls. But the difference between Singapore is that they used local beer girls only. Unlike Singapore, they do engage overseas beer girls. The live bands people are locals too. The set up crew for America is not as much as the one in Singapore as they held their festival in a convention centre which does not require them to build marquee and tentage.

Price
There is definitely a price tag to this event. Locals got to travel down to and fro from either their home or work. While the foreigners got to travel from afar overseas, so there is another price to pay which is their accommodation and transport fees. Also, the lost opportunity is forgone when visitors came for the event.

For both events, there is a price to pay for admissions no matter who the guests are. As for Beer Fest Asia, the beers are on sale, while the one in America, the beers are unlimited sampling. Though there is sampling for the one in Singapore, it is not all vendors provide free sampling of beers. Instead the one in America is unlimited sampling for all booth. In Singapore, it is a must to pay a vendor rental fee, while the in America, they eliminate the brewers’ booth cost. The sponsors for the events do need to pay a price, either in terms of cash or benefits.

Video on the Great International Beer Festival

Video on the live band in Beer Fest Asia

10:18 PM

BEST PRACTICES

The way they promote Beer Fest via the Singapore flyer is a very intelligent way. It is a “one stone kills two birds” idea. Through Beer Fest, visitors could take a ride on the Singapore flyer while enjoying beer, if only they bought the package price. Also, visitors may just want to just visit Singapore flyer without knowing about the Beer Fest is situated there, so these visitors could visit beer fest on the way.

Also, they got sponsors from various companies and not rely on one company, which is good, because, what if the company backs out, and the event will not happen due to budgeting. In addition, their sponsors are very supportive of the event and they are somehow correlated.
Another good way of earning money is selling Beer Fest currency which is bundled up to $10 or $50 per booklet. So for example, I bought the $10 currency, the beer that I want to buy cost me $8. So the remainder will be $2. So, I can’t do anything with that $2, and the minimum amount I can spend is $3, so I could not exchange for cash, hence, either I keep it, give it away, if not I got to spend another $10 or $50 for the cash currency booklet if I want to purchase more items. So this is a good strategic way for the event organiser to earn revenue.

The way the stage is situated is also good. It could be seen from any angle of the event site. With the good quality of sound, it is awesome. The sound quality throughout the whole event, the live band music is loud enough, the atmosphere is live up, and thus it creates the liveliness of the festival.

Beer Fest Currency

10:12 PM

STAKEHOLDERS

Host organisation and community
The host organiser is the beer fest co-festival director, Edward Chia, with his group of team. Beer Fest Asia Pte Ltd is the host organisation. They are the ones who come up with the plan, programmes and things that are essential to make the event successful. The supports of the host community are the Singapore Exhibition & Convention Bureau (SECB) and the Australian Trade Commission (Australian Government).

Sponsor
They are the event sponsors of the event, without them, event will not be so successful.

Media
They are the distribution channel of promoting the event. In this event, there is a lot of communication mix involved to promote it successfully. It is not a one day thing, and it has to be ongoing in order to be successful. There are many different Medias, directly and indirectly, are involved with the promotion of the event.

Co-workers
They are the people who do the setting up of the event site, building of marquee, supplying the essential stuffs for the beer booths, setting up of booths for all the companies. Also, those who work as part-timer, full-timer are also the co-workers. LOWE refrigeration contractor, food and beverage logistics, Bio-Air ventilation partner, DMC musical instruments, NLX event services, CSP productions, DAS sound reinforcement and timbre music partner are also part of the co-workers in this event.

Participants and Spectators
Participants and spectators are one of the important groups of people in the event. For this case, participants and spectators are the visitors of the event. They are the ones who make up the event. With participants, there will be definitely spectators present in the event. So there is games such as arm wrestling, the participants will be participating and compete, so definitely there will be spectators to support the participants. Also, there is a competition among the beer girls of whom being the hottest and popular. So definitely, the spectators will be present and the one who judge who is the winner. So it is important to have this group of people to make the event more interesting and lively.

9:37 PM

MAIN PURPOSE

The idea behind this festival is the experimentation process of finding and enjoying beers that may never, otherwise encounter locally in Singapore. The purpose of holding a beer festival at the Singapore Flyer is to promote Singapore Flyer to foreigners and locals and also vice versa for the beer festival. This will increase the number of visitors to visit the Singapore flyer as well as the festival. They also want to make known to more locals about the festival so as to gain more supports for this recurring event. This event could introduce to visitors of the different types of beer brands to all. Also, business trades could be discussed thru the event too about engaging beer companies to supply beers to their food and beverage outlet if possible. It is a good opportunity to advertise new products as well as introducing beer brands that is not known in Singapore as well as overseas. Local beer brands and distributor are heavily emphasized thru the promotion, such as Singapore sling, Carlsberg, Archipelago, etc.

9:36 PM

AMOUNT of TOURISM BENEFITS

I shall rate the tourism benefits to be 4 stars. Because this event not only concerns the beer companies in Singapore, it also concerns the overseas beer companies. In addition, it is held in a tourist attraction, how tourists could miss this festival since it’s a very unique event. It could not be a waste of the Singapore tourism board effort in promoting to foreigners since its target market does not only aim at the locals. So the amount of tourism benefits expectations is met. It could bring in more tourists if only the event is held during the June holidays. It blends well with the Great Singapore Sales as many are travelling in to Singapore during the June period for shopping tourism. Thus, these tourists will visit Singapore flyer and also the beer festival.

9:29 PM

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, Beer Fest Asia is a very successful event. It was a very well-planned event but there is one thing which I want to suggest is to install air-condition. Because, Singapore is a very warm tropical country, the event site is enclosed thus it makes me sweat profusely. Not only do I feel uncomfortable, I guess many would just feel the same too, so the next time round, install air-condition if possible, since it’s a place to chill out. It is not worth the money if visitors pay 30 bucks and sweat profusely while enjoying the beers. Moreover, it will not reflect Singapore well, as it is a tourist attraction, it will be good if air-condition is installed.

CHEERS!

9:20 PM

CREDITS

Beer Fest Asia 2009 (http://beerfestasia.com/)
The Great International Beer Festival (http://www.beerfestamerica.com/)
YouTube
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztxbsf6a80U&feature=channel)(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMyS-OlP2KM&feature=related)
Beer Fest Asia 2009 programme booklet

9:18 PM

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Beer Fest Photos!

9:30 PM