£30 “VIP” tickets to a “Gin Festival”. Ripoff
£30 “VIP” tickets to a “Gin Festival”. Or £17 standard. The difference? You get one free drink. That’s it. Thirteen quid for a gin and tonic.
For my thirty quid VIP Experience, I got a glass tumbler (value £2), a bamboo straw (5p), a tin measuring cup (40p), a ballpoint pen (30p) a leaflet listing the gins on sale (extra vouchers - 4 for £28) but no tasting notes (no useful information at all, so you might as well be ordering any random gin) a VIP button badge (5p) which does absolutely nothing and a cheap black bag made from J-Cloths to carry it in (10p). The VIP claim was to be some sort of privileged access, but that was non existent. It was a free for all. Standard £17 tickets got the same goodie bag.
So all the VIP ticket gets you is a single measure of gin …. for an extra £13 and a button badge. Bargain!!!! Not.
The venue was a local hall, bereft of atmosphere. It was more like a Mothers Union meeting. Tables laid out in strict rows, gin bars with hired staff who couldn’t tell you anything about their gins on offer, a food stall selling burgers for £12 each and an asthmatic karaoke singer doing their best to entertain an ambivalent audience (although there were some p**sed up dancers who seemed to enjoy it).
Meanwhile, in another room about half a dozen gin companies flogging their wares to the public. One can only assume they had also paid to be there because they were in hard sell mode, presumably to recoup their stall fee?
Festival it was not. Heavily overpriced, hard sell karaoke night might be a better description. This company is simply cashing in on a fading gin trend.
Apart from groups of women trying to relive a long forgotten hen party, most of the couples we spoke to were heartily disappointed.
1 avril 2025
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