By Mat Churchill and Kerry Larsen


As the dust settles on another Port Douglas Carnivale, questions are being asked as to how more sponsorship dollars can be raised.

This year's Carnivale produced 30 events held over 11 days on a budget that was 50% less than the previous year, according to Port Douglas Chamber of Commerce president and Carnivale general manager, Ken Dobbs, who admits something needs to change.

"We can't continue to run Carnivale in the same way while the sponsorship has fallen away," he said. "If we had bigger and better sponsorship we could put on bigger and better events. We need to improve the business model to make this happen."

And while some people believe that squeezing all of Carnivale's events over two weeks can leave a blank event calendar for the rest of the year, Mr Dobbs believes the event markets the destination of Port Douglas.

"There's been a perennial debate as to whether Carnivale should be one or two weeks, but the feedback we've received so far is that people believe it's still effective (running the event over two weeks)," Mr Dobbs said.

"The recipe, in terms of outcome, is if you reduce Carnivale to one weekend, you have to scrap some events.

"Looking forward to 2012, we would like to produce an event of the same standard as 2011 but that will be a difficult task, unless we can get more support from sponsors and volunteers.

"It is not just about getting large numbers of people to events during Carnivale, it is about ensuring the peak season is successful by reminding potential visitors that this a wonderful place," Mr Dobbs said.

"I have written letters to accommodation businesses for years and at the moment, the prime focus is on destination marketing, the same focus as the Challenge Cairns, or the Solar Eclipse Marathon - it's about exposing the destination."

But the question remains, are the tens of thousands of dollars being spent on advertising Carnivale outside the region producing results?

"It's very hard to measure the numbers of people who come into town for these events. You can't actually measure the advertising campaigns, but what else do you do?" Mr Dobbs said.

"If $80,000 was spent on advertising on the current format, you would have to spend $160,000 on advertising if you broke it up into two weeks spread out through the year.

"You can run 100 Carnivales for the cost of one TV ad for a week. So where do you draw the line?"

Duncan Watts, a business consultant from Cairns' based marketing company the 20/20 Group said deciding to dedicate part of a budget towards measuring the success of advertising can be a difficult decision to make.

"It’s the conundrum every marketer faces – how do we know which of our activities are successful? Redeemable coupons and unique calls to action probably aren’t particularly useful for destination marketing-type campaigns.

"Ideally you’d like to find what your marketing return on investment is by comparing your marketing spend and resultant coverage with the number of people who attended. But this means you’d need to set aside a budget towards recording crowd attendance.

"Street intercept surveys at events would also shed light on the most effective marketing activities, asking a sample group of attendees “how did you hear about us?”.

"Again this requires funds to pay someone to collect, collate and report on the data. With a tight budget there’s always the dilemma of deciding between research activities or spending that cash on more exposure for your product or service. "

A resort manager who did not want to be named told The Newsport regular feedback from their guests was that, while they appreciated and enjoyed Carnivale, they were unaware the event was on until they arrived in Port Douglas.

If you're an accommodation manager, what feedback do you receive about Carnivale?

If you're a business owner tell us what it would take for you to sponsor Carnivale.