Top Tips for Setting Up a Promotional Chill-out Zone at a Music Event

Before we know it, summer will be here – and with it the festival season. Music events across the country attract tens of thousands of music lovers with an appetite for entertainment, drinks, food and socialising. Setting up a chill-out area at a music festival or concert is a great way to reach these potential new customers – they’ll come to enjoy your hospitality and leave with a greater awareness and appreciation for your brand. So here are some top tips to help your brand host a cool and comfortable chill-out zone.

• Provide refreshments. Set up a bar within the chill-out area so that people don’t have to get up and leave if they want a drink. Your chill-out zone will be a soothing oasis where people can enjoy a beverage and a chat in between acts. The bar will encourage your customers to stay longer, and they’ll associate your brand with the fun time they’re having with their friends. It’s also a great way to generate revenue from drinks sales.

• Encourage loyalty. If you want to reward your loyal customers, a chill-out zone is the perfect perk to help repeat clients feel special. John Lewis is a great example of a company that does this well. They regularly set up zones inside big music events and offer free entry to loyalty card holders. You can make it an exclusive area with lots of deckchairs, where people can chill out and chat while still enjoying the music.

• Offer a mix of freebies and paid drinks. If you want to spoil your chill-out zone guests, free drinks will always go down well. But of course, it’s better if you don’t have to give everything away for free! Offering a combination of, say, free Pimms, together with a well-stocked bar where people can buy anything else they might want isn’t difficult to achieve with the right POS solution. Make sure you choose a system that can manage cash levels across multiple sites if required, while keeping track of your stock so that you don’t run out of supplies.

• Provide free Wi-Fi. Like moths to a flame, festival and gig goers will flock to a free Wi-Fi area, using the free connectivity to catch up with social media and maybe even post pictures of your event. Wi-Fi is easy to set up even on a temporary site, and there are companies that can sort out your Wi-Fi together with your POS on a single hire basis. Check out this case study to see how one festival bar company handled the Wi-Fi implementation.

• Hire some comfy but stylish furniture. In a chill-out zone, comfort and style go hand in hand, so it’s important to furnish it with just the right décor. Choose deckchairs, daybeds and comfy sofas to create rooms within your chill-out zone, and decorate with accessories like scatter cushions and lanterns.

Chill-out zones are a great way to raise awareness of your brand while getting people to engage with your staff and products. And by following our simple tips for a successful chill-out area, we guarantee you’ll be as relaxed and happy as your chilled-out clients.