Beer Festival Asia 2009

Sunday, June 21, 2009

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