NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Warren Weitzer is 40 years old, and there’s no way he’s going to share a portable toilet and camp out with thousands of other people just to see the Police perform at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival.
“I don’t do that. I won’t,” says Mr. Weitzer, a businessman from Syracuse, N.Y.
Instead, he’ll have access to a real bathroom, enjoy free and discounted food and drinks — and then he’ll be driven to a hotel 30 miles away from the festival site in Tennessee.
“I will go VIP or not go at all,” Mr. Weitzer says.
Bonnaroo draws 80,000 people to a farm in rural Manchester, 65 miles south of Nashville, but not all of them want to sweat through four days of music in sometimes inclement weather, crammed into the crowded tent city.
Summer music festivals attract fans like Mr. Weitzer by offering special VIP packages, promising a hassle-free weekend for an extra price, sometimes two to three times more than the cost of regular tickets.
Music fans will pay extra for two reasons — priority access and reduced annoyances, says Ray Waddell, who covers the touring industry for Billboard magazine.
“For some consumers, there’s no price tag too high for that,” Mr. Waddell says.
At Lollapalooza in Chicago’s Grant Park, private cabanas on the shore of Lake Michigan cost more than $32,500 for a party of 30. Air-conditioned viewing stands were available for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (JazzFest), and Bonnaroo artists will perform a private show for VIP guests during tonight’s opening festivities.
“There’s a psychological effect that comes when you know you’re doing as much as they allow anyone to do,” Mr. Weitzer says. “From the moment you get off the plane, you don’t have to worry about a thing.”
Mr. Weitzer says he has no spending limits when it comes to the music festivals he attends every year, such as JazzFest, Vegoose in Las Vegas and Gathering of the Vibes, a jam-band festival in Bridgeport, Conn.
If he can buy VIP tickets to those festivals, he will, but Mr. Weitzer says Bonnaroo’s package of amenities is the best for the price he’s paying, at least $1,300, including airfare.
“The hotel is a bonus you can’t get at other festivals,” he says. “It’s all a question of what’s important to you.”
If Mr. Weitzer is the typical VIP festival guest — an older, wealthier and more finicky music buff — 23-year-old college student Laura Beamon is the exception.
Mrs. Beamon and her husband skimped on their wedding to afford $1,121 for a pair of tickets to Bonnaroo, more than twice as much as regular tickets. In fact, Bonnaroo is their honeymoon.
“This could be the only year we could do this,” says Mrs. Beamon, a Darton College student in Albany, Ga. “Why not go all out?”
For a couple who spend just a few hundred bucks a year on concert tickets, VIP tickets could be a gamble, she says. “Twelve hundred dollars is a lot of money to spend on anything.”
Nevertheless, she’s betting on organizers to provide her with a relatively stress-free weekend, from the short walks to her private camping area to the air-conditioned bathrooms and hot showers.
Without those benefits, “you have to work harder to stay in a good mood and have a good time,” she says. “I just want to have more space and have more fun.”
Bonnaroo’s phenomenal success in the past five years is based in part on the intense fan loyalty in the face of rain, heat, traffic, smelly toilets and high-density camping. Most of the fans were drawn to Bonnaroo’s initial jam-band-heavy lineups, Mr. Waddell says.
“The jam-band fan will notoriously travel to some of the remotest places on Earth. The journey was half the fun,” Mr. Waddell says, “but mainstream rock fans aren’t as adventurous.”
With last year’s lineup expanding to include headliners Tom Petty and Elvis Costello — and this year including acts as varied as the White Stripes rockers and Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz legend Ornette Coleman — the festival has to reach out to those fans who would be more reluctant to go, Mr. Waddell says.
Sam Comerchero, director of operations, says having the Police headline this year has made it easier to sell $800 hotel packages to 30-and 40-year-olds interested in seeing the band for the first time since it broke up in 1984.
“They were a band that was popular in the ’70s and ’80s,” Mr. Comerchero says. “That demographic will turn out for Bonnaroo.”
Still, the VIP crowd at music festivals typically makes up just 10 percent of the total tickets sold, Mr. Waddell says. Bonnaroo sells about 2,000 VIP tickets, says Richard Goodstone of Superfly Productions, which runs both Bonnaroo and Vegoose.
“It’s not a profit center for the festival,” Mr. Goodstone says.
“We make sure that the packages are well priced.”
Mr. Waddell says there’s a limit to what music fans are willing to pay.
“You always have to be careful about pricing a segment out of the market,” he adds, “but the VIPs help subsidize those other ticket prices to keep them at a more affordable level.”
New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival: www.nojazzfest.com
Vegoose: www.vegoose.com
Lollapalooza: www.lollapalooza.com
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