Events, Electric Woods and Eklectica – how the team at Robin Hill are growing the business by reaching a wider audience and extending their season
James Crofts is Robin Hill’s Park Manager. He began working on site as a sixth former in the summer season. He studied Biology at university and he took up a full time position in 2010 after graduating.
How important are events like Electric Woods and more recently Eklectica to the business?
Our park is open seven days a week throughout the main season, from March through to the beginning of September. We’re expanding our events outside of that season, and that’s very important to us because it allows us to diversify our offering, opening up potential new markets. The challenging part is synergizing our bread-and-butter, frequent visitor ticket holders and day visitors, whilst adding different attractions and different events into the mix that still have traction with our existing visitors as well as opening up more business for us.
We’ve been doing Electric Woods for five years now. It was a slow burner to start with, like all events. You get better at things and the delivery becomes more seamless, then you add food and beverage and other bits to that experience and entertainment. It never stands still because customer expectations grow so you have to exceed your own expectations of delivery.
You’re definitely extending your own season and helping to raise the offering for the Island’s shoulder months.
We’re pleased about that but it can’t just be us in isolation. As soon as you have a proposition like Electric Woods for people to come to the Isle of Wight it’s quite strong but we also need more accommodation providers offering something, and more other attractions doing something unique or different. Other attractions are waking up now in the February half term and that’s far more compelling to somebody who comes to the Island than just us. Business continuity for us is great. All season round turnover, revenues, people coming through the doors, but also helping establish the Isle of Wight as somewhere to come at all times of year.
Robin Hill hosted Bestival from 2004 until 2016. Was it an obvious thing for you to do your own event last year, stepping into that weekend with Eklectica?
Yes. All good things must come to an end and we’re not naïve. We knew that the event didn’t have indefinite longevity and we knew there had to be something else for us. We’d seen Bestival do an amazing job over many years so the challenge was translating what they had done into something that we could do well. Bestival showed us that the Robin Hill site really lent itself to an event. The environment is so unique and different. It can be used to harbour a really wonderful, creative, fun, vibrant event. The whole of Eklectica is delivered in-house by the Robin Hill team.
Eklectica has come to fruition now and in its second year its where we want to be. Being in the same slot as Bestival did raise expectation but we were conscious to make sure that there weren’t direct parallels drawn straightaway. We aren’t “the new Bestival”, we’re our own thing. I think in some ways the first year was a testbed to see whether we could cope with delivering an event on that scale. We had some modest success I suppose although the weather was appalling for us. Operationally the event still went very well and that gave us a lot of confidence that we could do something on a scale like that.
I had very mixed feelings at the end of the weekend. In my mind Ekectica is a sunny, fair weather event where people are really getting ingrained in the environment and the fun and frivolity, finishing the summer with a great vibe. The strong winds and heavy rain really conspired against that and I was disappointed. I was also really proud of our team because everybody pulled together to do an incredible job. I was also relieved that the event went smoothly and without any injuries. All the visitors that came on site left happy and safely.
Every festival organiser that I’ve interviewed tells me that festivals are great fun but they come with a big risk financially. Does it make it a bit easier to run an event like Eklectica with the park behind you?
Of course. The amount of capital investment into a project like this isn’t insignificant but yes it does help that you’re trading on the back of a successful tourism business which has got the pedigree and the foundations. There is risk but you try and work to mitigate that as best as possible, creating an environment where the trade is going to be positive and the bottom line positive too.
How will Eklectica be different this year and how will you grow the event in the future?
Last year we didn’t have any camping on-site, so accommodation on-site for people this year is going to be massive. It means we can draw from the mainland. We’re adding a Friday night offering to the weekend too which allows us to extend the program of entertainment and give people a reason to start their weekend early.
This and other projects are going to enhance the park and its offering. They’re definitely staples of what we’re doing. It’s all about making sure you deliver. We’re not trying to rush. It’s more about the journey and making sure that the event grows without losing its own personality. It’s never going to be a 70 thousand person event. I want it to be a really fun, sensible, safe, festival capped at twenty thousand people.
