Craft Beer Festival Attendees

Data was collected during 2014-2015 at four beer festivals to examine the profile of festival attendees. The four festivals were the Cape Town Festival of Beer, Sandton Craft Beer Fair (Johannesburg), SA on Tap (Johannesburg), and Clarens Craft Beer Festival. Interviews were undertaken with a purposive sample of 132 attendees across these four festivals. In terms of demographics the profile of beer festival attendees is given on Table 5.2.

Table 5.2: Demographic Profile of Festival Attendees (n=132)

Characteristic Key Findings

Gender  65 % male; 35 % female.

Age  Average age 35.9 years; 50% <35years;

32% between 36-45 years.

Race  64% white; 17% black (African); 10%

Coloured; 10% Asian.

Marital status  69% single.

Employment status  70% in full time employment; 21%

students; 9% part-time employment. Estimated Household income (n=108)  Average R560k; 67 % over R500k. Highest level of Education  69% University graduates.

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residents of community where festival is hosted.

Source: (Author Survey Data, see appendix D)

It is revealed that with an average age overall of 35.9 years beer festival patrons are mainly Millennia’s (born after 1980), or in the age group 36-45 years. This finding corresponds with research on craft beer patronage in the USA as reported by Reid et al. (2014). Beer festival participants in South Africa are majority singles, mainly males from middle-income or high- income households, relatively well-educated and working in full-time employment. Indeed, of special note is the highly educated profile of local beer festival attendees with over two- thirds having bachelor degrees and 13 percent with postgraduate qualifications. The cohort of attendees includes not surprisingly a notable share of students. The racial profile of beer festival attendance discloses the dominance of Whites but with one-third of participants being Blacks, Asians or Coloureds. In addition 89 percent were South African citizens and 55 percent of the sample (n=132) were classified as non-residents of the community where festival was hosted.

Table 5.3: Festival Attendance: Patterns and Motivations

Characteristic Key Findings

Group  Average size 2.87 persons; only 11 %

of participants are alone.

Type of group  86 % with friends or relatives.

Tourist or Day visitor  73 % day visitors; 27% are staying overnight for at least one night.

Tourists stay  Average 1.54 nights (n=35)

Type of accommodation  Bed and Breakfast 46%; Hotel 31%;

With Friends or relatives 17 %; 6% at backpackers hostel.

Awareness of festival  27 % social media; 20 % friends and relatives; 19 % word of mouth; 13 % radio or television.

Attendance at other festivals  91 % have attended other local craft beer festivals within South Africa; Average number of festival

attendance is 2.20 per annum; 17 % have attended at least 4 beer festivals

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in calendar year; 73 % definitely plan to attend future events.

Critical factors affecting decision to attend  82% entertainment on offer; 80% weather; 75% number and selection of breweries; 71% location of festival; 68% cost.

Estimated expenditure at the festival  71 % stipulated over R400

Participation in Craft brewery tours  45 % have undertaken brewery tours Potential for South Africa to be a successful

beer tourism destination

 82 % Yes and 18 % maybe

Source: (Author Survey, see appendix D)

The major survey results concerning patterns of attendance and festival attendee motivations are captured on Table 5.2. Several points can be highlighted. First, is the sociability which is attached to craft beer festivals with the overwhelming majority of attendees being in groups 2-3 persons with friends or relatives; although 73 percent are day visitors as many as 55 percent are not residents of the locality where the festival is being hosted. The sociability of festivals is further emphasized by the importance attached to entertainment linked to such festivals. Core reasons for attending the festival are to experience new forms of beer, to make purchases of beer, socialize with friends and relatives, enjoying festival entertainment and consume new beer and food pairings (Table 5.2).

Second, beyond sociability there is also a considerable group of participants who are interested in tasting new craft beer products and enjoying the opportunities for experiencing new beer and food pairings. For these patrons the variety of craft beers on offer at festivals becomes a critical factor influencing the decision to attend. It is observed that information about local beer festivals is obtained from a range of different sources, most significantly social media platforms, and word-of-mouth and from friends and relatives. These issues around attendee motivations in respect of sociability of festivals and the desire of certain patrons to expand their knowledge and experience of craft beers find their parallels in the corpus of international work that has been undertaken on the motivations of beer festival goers in USA and New Zealand (see Kraftchick et al., 2014; Fountain and Ryan, 2015).

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Third significant set of results surrounds the geography of festival goers. It is disclosed that most festival attendees are day visitors and drawn from the immediate location where the festival is held. Given the dominance of large cities in the hosting of beer festivals in South Africa this result is not surprising for the Cape Town and Johannesburg beer festivals. At the Clarens beer festival a major reason for attendance is that of ‘getting away for the weekend’ as most attendees were not from the local area and instead from cities in South Africa’s economic heartland around Johannesburg. In terms of festival attendees staying overnight at the locality where the festival occurs, across the four festivals only 27 percent are tourists in that definition. Of note is that 83 % of this group are in paid accommodation with the rest staying at friends or relatives accommodation. Furthermore, what is noteworthy is that in the case of the festival at Clarens 88 percent of patrons were non-locals. Moreover, 58 percent of attendees would be classed as domestic tourists as they were staying overnight, mostly in paid accommodation; the rest were non-Clarens residents but day visitors. Indeed, the findings from Clarens confirms that of other sources which indicate the importance of craft breweries as tourism assets for South African small towns and the potential of beer tourism as a basis for promoting local tourism development in small town South Africa (Corne and Reynecke, 2013). It is therefore evident that the hosting beer festivals to promote the niche of beer tourism can be a boost for local tourism economies and enhancing the local economic development potential in small towns, which is an issue of considerable relevance in the making of South Africa’s post-productivist countryside (Nel and Rogerson, 2007).