HAVE TOURISTS AND PARTY GOERS LOST THE RIGHT TO SAFE AND HEALTHY EXPERIENCES?

Last year I watched Trainwreck, a documentary on the Woodstock ‘99 music festival. After watching, I took a moment to pause and reflect. I asked myself, have we as a society, and as health and safety professionals, really learned and improved as much as we could have? Over the past five years, Splendour in the Grass, Fyre Festival, Astro World and Houston Music Festival have all experienced unsafe and unhealthy practices, and even fatal occurrences. These events are not typically discussed in the occupational health and safety circle, and they are not the usual scenarios that are looked to for lessons learned. Nor are the recovery efforts presented at conferences, with improvements showcased and implemented at the next event. 

Fast forward to today, we wake up to learn that charges against the owners of the Whakaari/White Island, where the fatal volcano tour occurred, have been dismissed in the Auckland District Court. We are presented with photos from stranded party goers at Burning Man with no access to food, water or shelter, due to flash flooding. Globally, there is continued reoccurrences of festivals gone wrong, and too many innocent lives lost too soon. 

There are many large-scale high-risk events with over 300,000 attendees, in remote locations, including the Grand Prix. These are risk assessed, planned and managed based on risk and consequences, and are proof cases that catastrophic events can be avoided.  

So often in the workplace we talk about the duty of care to the employee, so what is the duty of care to tourists and event participants? What risk assessments and control plans are in place? Are they shared with festival goers? How are emergency plans tested and evaluated? Who is validating them? Is this information readily available to consumers? In my opinion, it is time to put some regulation, governance and accreditation around tourist expeditions and musical festivals in place. After all, these events and tourist locations are also a workplace for others, who have a right to a safe working environment. We need to make safe the entertainment and tourism event realm.