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New Plymouth business owner Craig Macfarlane thinks losing Womad, the biggest weekend of the year in Taranaki, will hit industries hard.
The loss of Womad 2021 may have broken the hearts of regular festival visitors, but it has left many Taranaki businesses facing a tough year ahead, a hospitality guru has warned. “People rely on the spike that Womad brings,” Craig Macfarlane said. “It could be quite a different winter because of it.” Macfarlane, who owns a number of hospitality businesses across New Plymouth, said the festival, which usually takes place in March, is the biggest weekend of the year for the region.
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Womad will not be coming to New Zealand in 2021. But Womad International are pinning their hopes on returning to New Plymouth in 2022.
After months of speculation about its future, the 2021 Womad NZ festival has been cancelled. Womad International director Chris Smith said they had been unable to secure a partner to run next year’s March event, but he was adamant the three-day festival would return to New Plymouth’s TSB Bowl of Brooklands from 2022. “We believe that the right place for the Womad experience is still its home of the last 20 years ‘The Brooklands Bowl’, New Plymouth,” Smith said in a written statement.