Blossom festival 'successful' despite loss

Three successive years of losses for the Alexandra Blossom Festival was worrying but the event was still worth keeping, Central Otago Mayor Malcolm Macpherson said yesterday.

Earlier this week, acting festival committee chairman Tim Cadogan said the 2009 festival had made a "significant loss".

He declined to comment on the amount but said the financial details would be disclosed at the committee's annual meeting on March 1.

The festival made a loss of $38,325 in 2008 and of $22,983 in 2007.

Approached by the Otago Daily Times for comment yesterday, Dr Macpherson was surprised three successive festivals had lost money, but said he still judged the event a success.

"You need to draw a distinction between whether it makes or loses money, and whether it's successful.

I think the last two years the festival has been very successful and is certainly worth keeping.

Its profit or loss is not a measure of its success."

"There's lots of good things about it.

If we lost it, we'd mourn the loss and someone else would be quick to pick it up."

The Central Otago District Council was not represented on the festival committee but the Vincent Community Board was.

The board also provided some annual funding for the event.

"So my comments are made as an outsider, so to speak.

I'm not sure where the blame lies for the succession of losses.

The individual events which make up the festival all seem popular, from the arts exhibition through to the senior festival queen contest and all the other elements."

The committee members were hard-working and it was a "big ask" to organise the festival -one of Otago and Southland's biggest events.

"The revenue on the Saturday [the float procession day] has been declining as [crowd] numbers have gone down and I'm not sure why that is, although the weather has certainly played a part."