07-12-2004, 07:29 PM
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#15 (permalink)
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Valhalla is cancelled.
Stuart has posted this to the Sector 14 Yahoo Group this evening:- Quote:
I'm afraid the news is not good. Sadly, we have no option left open to us now except to cancel the event.
As everyone on the list knows, ticket sales are extremely low. We have sold just over 130 tickets - that amount has barely changed in the last three weeks (I think it has gone up by about ten tickets). Two weeks ago, just before I announced the risk of cancellation, the actors had a deadline for providing flight details - over the years running the events, I have gained a few contacts who can, on occasion, get discounts on flight costs, given sufficient notice.
Given the current financial situation, I needed those discounts to be able to afford to run. Losing those discounts would make it impossible, and the contact I had who could get the flights at a price I could afford was going on holiday.
Sadly, most of the guests missed the deadline, for a variety of reasons which I am not going to discuss. I knew we had most likely lost the discounts, and hence announced to the list the risk of cancellation. I had a deadline on various deposits which would need to be paid which was due on Friday just passed, and my flight contact would not be back until today; given the likelihood of the flight price having risen sharply, I would need to pull before Friday unless I felt ticket sales had improved sufficiently to survive the increased flight costs we might face.
Most of the people on the list have been amazing. I didn't want to let you down. So although the ticket sales hadn't noticeably improved, I managed to convince the people who were due deposits on Friday to give us an extension - better to give us that and hopefully get paid in full if we ran, than to refuse the extension and have me cancel on Friday. Thankfully, all of them were reasonable, and granted us the extension. However, even with the extension, we needed the flights to come in at the lower price, because the ticket sales had not improved.
Today my flight broker came back from holiday. They confirmed to me late this afternoon that we have lost the chance of the discounts - my flight bill would treble if I were to run. I have now informed the actors, we have discussed the options, and none of us can see a way ahead that allows the event to happen. I don't want to leave anyone hanging any longer, hence this e-mail to inform everyone on the list.
To cancel will cost me over £10,000. If we had got our discounted flights, running would probably have cost me £15,000 by the end of the day (that is taking photo sales and the like into account - it'd be more without them). Now, without the discounts on the remaining flights, to run would incur a loss in the region of £30,000. There is simply no way we can do that, and no amount of photo sales would make it survivable.
Refunds will be posted out to everyone in the next few days.
Stuart
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