Exciting New Format for 2017 American Express Queenstown Winter Festival

The Southern Hemisphere’s biggest celebration of winter is getting an exciting new four day format in 2017.

The American Express Queenstown Winter Festival, the official start to Queenstown’s winter season, is being reshaped into a shorter, action packed four-day event from 2017.

Building on a position of strength that has been developed over the last 42 years, the exciting new four day format will ensure the Festival remains vibrant and exciting for both visitors and locals alike.

The change comes following a review undertaken by the Queenstown Winter Festival Advisory Group to ensure the Festival remains sustainable into the future. Extensive consultation with the community, organisers, other stakeholders and sponsors was undertaken resulting in the advisory group decision to refresh the format to allow the Festival to continue to evolve.

Destination Queenstown Chief Executive Graham Budd says the new format will allow visitors and locals alike to participate in and enjoy the entire festival experience, as well as making it easier for sponsors to leverage their investment in the event.

“All events need to evolve and adapt to remain vibrant and sustainable.  Our primary objective is to announce the start of the Queenstown winter season through this celebration. We believe we can achieve all of the objectives for visitors and locals across four days and it will make community participation easier and more focused.

“It can also be challenging for sponsors to commit to leveraging their sponsorship through on the ground activations, across 10 days.  Our current, valued sponsors are very supportive of the concept and we look forward to working with them on the new look Winter Festival of the future,” he says.

While the 2017 programme is yet to be finalised it will retain key favourites while also injecting some new events. This will be the immediate task of the advisory group now that the 2016 Festival is well underway. The new four day Winter Festival will remain on the equivalent weekend in 2017, deliberately timed to be approximately two weeks after the scheduled start to the ski season but prior to the school holidays.