Beer Festival Survey

Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 12 2010 @ 12:11 PM GMT

Looks good Helen, it covers all the main points I think! 

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Authored by: rovingricey on Thursday, March 18 2010 @ 06:36 PM GMT

Sorry I wasn't well enough to make it to last night's Festival Meeting in order to hear everyone's views. I have a long-term health condition that flares up when I least need it! I will do my best to be at the next meetings (branch and Beer Fest) but in the meantime I am very happy for people to email me their comments. I thought I would post a lengthy comment here to clarify some of the points that I believe came up in discussion last night.

For information, doing a visitor survey was not my idea! It was proposed at the very first Beer Fest. meeting that I came to in early summer last year. I volunteered to do it because I have a background in research methods and thought this would be a useful way I could contribute to the branch and the festival since my health limitations make it difficult for me to do more physical activities like standing pulling pints.

Like any event survey the reasons for doing it are a mixture of 'evaluation' (finding out what people thought of the event, what they would like to see done differently) and 'getting to know the punters' questions - so that we know more about who actually comes to the festival. The more we know about who already comes, the more we can target future advertising of the festival or perhaps seek more targeted sponsorship in the future. For example, if we found out that the cider bar attracts a large percentage of female custom we could take this information to local businesses with a female clientel. They might be more interested in sponsoring a cask if we can prove we are reaching their target market.

Obviously a questionnaire like this is only useful if we get a good response rate. As I understand it, we have no budget to offer an incentive for returning the questionnaire (e.g. a prize draw) so the reason for including the 'Beer of the Festival' nominations on the questionnaire was in the hope that it would increase the number responding. I would also hope that we could ask all the festival volunteers to gently encourage visitors to fill the survey out during their visit.

I had planned to ask everyone last night whether they think it would be better to put the Beer of the Festival nominations at the very start of the survey as visitors might be more used to filling out this bit and therefore be more likely to fill the rest of it in. What do you all think?

I realise that including all the questions that different people have asked for means that the survey looks quite long, although I took care that it did not go over two sides of A4. Many of the questions require only a tick; there is no need to write extra comments unless the responder feels strongly about the issues. However, it is always good to shorten these things if possible - if we can agree on which questions to take out.

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Authored by: Kaz on Monday, March 22 2010 @ 01:56 PM GMT

 Thanks Helen. Not sure how many people are regularly checking the website (there certainly aren't many contributing) so I will send an email to the branch again asking them to give you their feedback in case anyone has missed this.
Cheers,
Karen

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Authored by: rovingricey on Monday, April 12 2010 @ 11:01 AM BST

Just seen the enquiry forwarded to Nicky about admittance policy for under-18s. I wonder if we should add a question related to that to the survey? something along the lines of 'do you think under-18s should be allowed at the Festival (to be served soft drinks only)?' or just a comments box about admittance of under-18s.

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Authored by: Colin on Monday, April 12 2010 @ 11:18 AM BST

This is just a limitation of the license, which as far as I know cannot be gotten around. Children cannot be granted access to the bar area, and as both the major and minor halls have bars, they are restricted to the foyer, or other area - like the room upstairs. Unfortunately we would need to pay for the room upstairs, and that would require sponsorship.

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