Running festival chopped
The Wild 2024 has become the latest Queenstown Lakes event to pull pin as economic pressures continue to bite.
Based in Arrowtown, one of New Zealand's trail running hotspots, the multi-day running festival was scheduled to take place in December, raising funds and awareness for rewilding projects.
Last year's inaugural event attracted 653 competitors who took on the five distances, including the 9km Beast of Beetham and the 75km ultra marathon with 3900m of vertical gain.
But on Friday, the organising committee - the six trustees of The Wild For Nature Charitable Trust - confirmed the 2024 event won't go ahead.
"We fully expected we could increase numbers based on last year to make the event financially sustainable, given how well it went, but we've just been gobsmacked at how slowly the entries have been coming in," trustee and Wanaka ultra runner Mal Law says.
"I've spoken to a lot of people in the past week or two, in the lead up to the decision, and everyone is saying the same, that numbers are down, tourism is down in this neck of the woods. That's a function of the economic downturn, obviously.
"And there's a growing perception that Queenstown Lakes is an expensive place to visit. You're not getting the cheap flights we had pre-Covid, accommodation is crazy prices, so people look at the total cost of coming to an event like ours and it's too much."
In 2023, some 80% of the runners were from outside the Queenstown Lakes region, while 30% were international.
Law says that despite support from commercial partners, the lion's share of the revenue was from entries and even the most optimistic forecasts had the 2024 event sustaining a major financial loss.
By making the decision early, all participants will receive a 100% refund of their entry fee and have been emailed.
Last week, organisers of Queenstown's iconic Peak to Peak multi-sport race confirmed their event is postponed until 2025. The race from The Remarkables skifield to Coronet Peak, via Lake Wakatipu, attracts about 450 competitors and has been running for 30 years, although was paused through the pandemic.
Other non-sporting events are also struggling to balance rising costs and paperwork with fewer attendees. The Queenstown Business Chamber of Commerce's Out To Lunch event, associated with Winter Pride, has been pulled due to poor ticket sales.
Law says he believes Queenstown Marathon, The Kepler Challenge and other big name events will still have enough pull, although numbers might be down, while smaller local events will also work.
"But the smaller destination events, without the history and the iconic status, are probably going to suffer."
The Wild also has a difficult history to contend with. The planned 2022 event was cancelled when the professional event company managing it went bust. Organisers lost money and competitors lost their entry fees.
"So when we picked it up and changed it to a charitable trust to try to resurrect the event, we were already dealing with damaged goods and had lost a lot of good will. Despite that, we managed to put on a great event last year and I thought we'd got it to the point where it had turned around."
He expects would-be competitors might be reluctant to put money on the line.
"So I think unfortunately we're probably done with the concept."
He says there is one positive though. The event was created to engage the running community in native habitat restoration projects and the functioning charitable trust will continue that mission.
"We're carrying on with the trust's rewilding work that is very dear to our hearts. And there's easier ways of getting money in the bank than organising a very complicated and stressful big event, which produces marginal returns."
