Tess Reidy 

Music festival circuit joins the package holiday business

Industry reports huge rise in all-in-one holidays to European dance music events this summer, but some DJs are sceptical
  
  

Benicassim festival in Spain – now you can take the package holiday route.
Benicassim festival in Spain – now you can take the package holiday route. Photograph: Agencia Efe/Rex Photograph: Agencia Efe/Rex

First there were cash machines and flushing toilets, then came "glamping" (glamorous camping). Now music festivals, once edgy celebrations of youthful counterculture, have been embraced by the travel industry and are being offered as package holidays.

European music festivals are now a rite of passage for many young people – in the same way that Ibiza was for a generation in the late 80s and early 90s – and with dance music dominating the airwaves for the first time in more than a decade, young crowds are increasingly choosing the Club 18-30-style festival getaway in their search for sun, sea … and loud music.

"The European scene is booming and young people are realising you can go to a festival abroad and get your flights, airport transfers and ticket for around £350 – the same as a trip to Reading or Glastonbury," said Dermot O'Flynn, director of the Eufest travel company, which is selling twice as much apartment accommodation in Croatia as it did last summer.

According to a recent Festicket survey, 20% of festivalgoers bought everything in one package in 2013, but 95% would like to do so this year. "The industry is very healthy, and package trips are more popular than ever," said Barri Coen, head of marketing at Festicket. "The trend is towards smaller, boutique festivals, and people are increasingly tieing them in with their summer holiday plans. We've seen a huge increase in the number of people booking hotels or apartments."

Festivals themselves are offering joint ticket packages. Exit in Serbia has combined with Sea Dance festival in Montenegro, and Sziget in Budapest has linked up with B.my.Lake in the Hungarian countryside.

The BBC Radio 1 DJ Pete Tong recently launched his own package trip, All Gone To Sea, a four-day, all-star Caribbean cruise. He told the Observer: "The idea of a cruise has always appealed to me. I love the camaraderie and sense of family that grows out of having a group of like-minded music lovers come together. We're going to recreate that familial vibe, but with the world's best DJs, island parties and an amazing boat."

Daisy Cantalamessa, 27, from Reading, finds booking a package trip far more straightforward than finding her own accommodation. "The festival organisers do everything for you. It's cheaper, and you don't have to worry about airport transfers," she said. "When it comes to proper holidays, I like to do things my way. But in terms of festivals, where your only focus is the music and having fun, why wouldn't you want to make your journey and stay cheaper and easier?"

Others, however, see festivals as passé, and package trips as just another step in the corporatisation of youth culture. Terry Farley, co-founder of the record label Junior Boy's Own, whose artists have included Underworld and the Chemical Brothers, thinks dance music festivals have reached saturation point and that most are just outdoor parties with DJs playing off laptops, rather than a festival in the true sense, with bands and a wide variety of music. "Kids are aping the festival way of 'watching a DJ' and reacting to his antics and lightshows or special effects, rather than realising it's themselves who are the stars of the show and the dance floor belongs to them, not some idiot up on a big stage throwing cakes or waving his arms about like a clown," said Farley.

Bill Brewster, co-author of Last Night a DJ Saved my Life, thinks the wave of dance music festivals has already peaked. "The current dance music craze is nothing new. It happened in 94 and 95 with big names like Frankie Knuckles, Sasha, John Digweed and Todd Terry, but it won't last for ever. It's a wave at the moment, and it's a big wave, but it will die down and things will go back to how they were before. That's just the cyclical nature of music."

 

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