Taiwan’s first-ever for-profit light festival organized by a local government last month netted a profit of NT$6.19 million (US$218,914) from the sale of 168,321 tickets, the Tainan City Government said in a news release on Monday.
The second iteration of the Longci Light Festival closed after 66 days on Sunday last week, and the large number of visitors was proof that municipalities could charge a reasonable admittance fee to public events, the Tainan Cultural Affairs Bureau said.
The festival in Tainan’s least populated district of Longci (龍崎) featured 14 light installations.
Photo: Wu Chun-feng, Taipei Times
Charging entrance fees was an experiment to test whether for-profit public events are viable, bureau director Chen Yung-chieh (陳雍杰) said.
Before the festival, the bureau had faced considerable criticism over the fees and whether it would be possible to attract a large number of visitors, but it sold 104,979 tickets at NT$50 apiece, or 70 percent of all available tickets, he said.
Admission was free on the first three days of the festival.
However this year the daily average visitor number was 2,600, compared with 4,000 daily visitors last year, Chen said.
“To enhance the quality of the visitor experience,” it aimed to limit the number of visitors, which it achieved by charging a fee, he said.
The bureau’s statistics showed that the district benefited economically from the festival, Chen said.
Local farmers, street vendors and restaurants have reported a significant increase in customers during the festival, he added.
“The popularity of the festival shows that people are increasingly accepting that they should pay to attend art and culture events,” Chen said.
The next Longci Light Festival would open in December, the bureau said.
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