Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Houston, we've got a problem!!!!

What are they smoking down on Rochford Street, $800,000.00 for a golf "big break" and now $100,000.00 to some rock music promoters, surely they only get the money if they deliver the 10,000 fans from out of Province. I can't imagine that there would be more than a few hundred people from "off Island" that would even bother to attend this event. Who are the people that are sitting around the table making these decisions with our taxpayers money...
Tourism department providing $100,000 for Alanis concert
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
CBC News
P.E.I.'s Department of Tourism is putting up $100,000 to help pay for an Alanis Morissette concert near Charlottetown on Sept. 13.
Promoters are hoping to sell 10,000 tickets for the Vista Bay concert, which will feature the Joel Plaskett Emergency, Good Charlotte and Haywire in addition to Morissette.
Deputy tourism minister Melissa MacEachern told CBC News Monday that tourism in the province needed a boost.
"Projections around what room-nights sold would look like in early September aren't as high as we'd like to see them, so in a competitive environment you have to take action, and that's really what we did," said MacEachern.
"What we're looking at is to help shore up the early part of our September season."
Based on surveys from previous concerts that size, said MacEachern, the tourism department believes if 10,000 concert-goers eat, sleep, and drink on P.E.I., the province's investment will pay off.
MacEachern said the Summerset Music Festival organizers are still working with regulatory agencies in the province to ensure the concert site will meet all the necessary standards.
"We certainly discussed the venue and safety, security, health issues. Obviously they all have to be approved by the various regulatory agencies before we would ever agree to continue," she said.
"They're going through all that process, in terms of the number of attendees."
The $100,000 is a grant to the organizers, who are assuming all the risks associated with the music festival.
Event organizers will not say how many tickets have been sold so far.

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