Soundwave Festival chief AJ Maddah has confirmed that the festival has finalised an airfare deal to secure cheap flights for punters travelling to all Soundwave 2015 destinations and will in fact be subsidising part of those airfares for fans.
Maddah made the announcement via Twitter yesterday confirming that the discounted airfares will apply to flights departing from all Virgin Australia Airline ports to “ANY” Soundwave destination – Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Speaking to Music Feeds today he also confirmed that these flights will be subsidised by Soundwave.
“They’re building this widget to go on our website which will be an access point for people to book their fares and from what I’m being told they’re going to be literally the cheapest fares available online anywhere, for anyone,” he explained. “A lot of promoters do these deals with airlines, whereby they come and get a cut of the proceedings from the travel. We’re in fact subsidising it.”
The deal will be a consolation for Western Australian punters, following Soundwave Festival’s decision to drop Perth of the tour in 2015 after dismal 2014 sales. Maddah was very definitive in his stance that Soundwave will not tour WA again, telling one follower that the festival, “Will not come back under any fucking circumstances whatsoever.”
Maddah said Soundwave “persevered with Perth for so many years” because of the fans but were left with no choice but to pull out this year. “We didn’t want to exclude them. As it is, it’s gonna be tough for most people to afford to fly and accommodate themselves and come to a festival on the east coast but we wanted to try to make that as easy as possible for those that want to do it,” he said.
While negotiations for the airfare deal started with the intention of helping out Perth fans, Maddah said he began to receive a lot of feedback from fans in other areas of the country appealing for similar assistance, so he got his “travel tards” on the case.
“They came back and said, ‘Well, we’ve spoken to Virgin and they’re willing to stretch those discounts nationally for us, from any city, to any Soundwave destination.’ So that was quite exciting, beyond what I had expected.”
The deal is an unprecedented move from the festival. “We want to make it easy for people from Perth or from Darwin or from Tasmania, from places where they don’t get many shows or festivals or events, to be able to travel and come to these shows,” explained Maddah. “It’s not a great deal, but if an extra 5 or 10 bucks helps then we’ll do that.”
Maddah says anyone coming to Soundwave will have access to these subsidised tickets once the widget on the website is built, but the festival is limited by the number of seats available on the Virgin flights. Tickets will be allocated on a “first booked, first served basis” and return flights will also be discounted.
“We’re chucking in a few dollars and also making some brass badges for people that are travelling, just as an appreciation that we know you’re going to a lot of effort and a lot of expense to come for our shows and we appreciate it,” he said. “If we can’t take events where they are within physical reach of fans, if we can help fans travel to the events then obviously that’s important.”
Just met w the travel-tards. Very pleased to announce we have secured cheap airfares from Perth & Hobart to ALL #SW15 destinations!
— AJ (@iamnotshouting) October 27, 2014
Correction to previous email: the #SW15 travel discount will apply from all Virgin Australia ports to ANY SW destinations! #TravelTards
— AJ (@iamnotshouting) October 27, 2014
@Chookie_1986 never. Will not come back under any fucking circumstances whatsoever.
— AJ (@iamnotshouting) October 27, 2014
