The Burt Munro Challenge will be held from February 9-13 and Southern Field Days from February 9-11.
Burt Munro Challenge committee chairman Bill Moffatt said he acknowledged Southland’s February event calendar was becoming more congested, but the 2028 clash was an exception.
The 2018 decision to move the annual Burt Munro event from its once traditional November date to February, which offered a more settled weather pattern, was well researched. The event also needed to be slotted into the one weekend the Southland Sports Car Club had free on its Teretonga February event calendar.
Easter’s timing has compressed multiple major events into a short window.
"It’s just the way that Easter has fallen. That has sort of jammed everything up quite a bit."
He believed neither group was digging their heels in, but were both constrained by other events.
It was also not about who had been around the longest, or first, he said.
Visitors to the event frequently book their accommodation a year in advance to ensure a bed with demand often spilling to surrounding areas.
However, the event’s rally camp-site always has capacity for those who prefer to camp.
Southern Field Days chairman Steve Henderson said the Southland event, which happened every second year, was part of a larger national circuit calendar.
"If we were to ever change, it would hinge on the suppliers and the site builders being able to handle that."
However, the committee had not yet met to make a decision, but he did not expect the event would be rescheduled.
Southern Field Days attracts about 700 exhibitors and more than 40,0000 attendees to the 57ha site for the Wednesday to Friday event.
Mr Henderson said visitor accommodation was often sourced from outlying towns, including as far as Balclutha.
The SFD committee also engaged Te Tipua School, which offered a community-run accommodation network as a fundraiser for the school, where visitors were billeted in homes and holiday houses throughout the rural community.
"There’s quite a few people that have a free house here and there.
"You get quite a few that do stay with other staff members within their business."
Great South tourism and events general manager Mark Frood said as the regional development agency, discussions were ongoing with the two parties and it was acting as an independent intermediary, aiming to reduce overlap between major events.
Great South was, "trying to map out things that work for everybody as much as we can".
"When you’ve got big-scale events ... the opportunity to spread it out is too good for the community."
The key issue with the clash was the region’s ability to host the influx of visitors without impacting their experience in the region.
He believed that while Southland could cope when it was busy, overlapping and stacked large events reduced the opportunity to maximise benefit over time, undermining their long-term benefits.
"It’s better to spread events across the line rather than have them put together.
"Local businesses are better supported and you deliver a better experience for attendees."
Large event clashes were infrequent, but did happen occasionally due to calendar alignments based off long-term cycles.
"We have a regional event strategy ... and we kind of work with all events and hopefully get to the situation where we don’t have things double up."
Other events taking place in Southland that month include the Oceania Track Cycling Championships, Next Gen National Championship Series, Classic Speedfest, Edendale Crank Up and Southern Grilles and Gasoline.
