Afton Tickets has been privileged to collaborate with the Astoria Warrenton Crab, Seafood & Wine Festival since 2022. As they mark their 42nd year, the festival’s extensive experience provides valuable insights into organizing and executing exceptional events.
The festival was founded by the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce in 1982 to drive the local economy in the “off season”. Today, the event is a chance to sample highlights of the region’s seafood, wine, beer, spirits, and art/craft offerings. The festival draws over 7,000 attendees annually to the Clatsop County Fairgrounds. In the festival’s storied past, it has thrived at several different venues, including the base of the Astoria-Megler Bridge, Tongue Point, and the Hammond Marina. The Crab Fest draws a wide variety of guests. Locals catch up with friends and family over Clown Bread (shrimp and crab melts made by the Astoria Clowns, a local institution), and visitors to Astoria-Warrenton get to see the best the Columbia River coast has to offer.
The Astoria-Warrenton Crab Seafood & Wine Festival has used these special experiences to created excitement with each year. This allows for members of the local community to still have the desire to attend every year. This highlights the important of creating a community centered event that involved various local groups.
This community-centered event inspires locals to attend and support the event year after year. The festival is made possible by local vendors, contractors, nonprofit organizations, and a dedicated team of volunteers.
The current festival director, Isabel Dunn, reflects: “Every year, an average of 250 people volunteer for our three-day festival. Given Astoria and Warrenton have a combined population of roughly 16,500 residents, those volunteers amount to 1.5% of Astoria/Warrenton. To put that in perspective, imagine a Portland-based event needing to recruit over 9,500 volunteers (1.5% of Portland)! That degree of volunteer turnout is pretty remarkable. We show up for each other here.”
To ensure efficient ticketing operations, the chamber leverages the support of local banks and credit unions, recruiting their staff as skilled volunteers at the festival box office. Dunn remarks: “Afton Tickets’ system, equipment, and account management support make it easy to quickly train our ticketing volunteers and greet customers for a fun-filled weekend.”
In future years of the festival, the chamber plans to add a flash ticket discount for locals, to thank them for their volunteerism and ongoing support of the event. For the festival organizers, these and other updates are only a click away with the help of Afton Tickets.
On the festival’s first day this year, customers were lined up out front in anticipation of the doors opening. We cleared the line of 200 customers in a record 7 minutes.
With community is at the heart of the event the event leads are able to use various ticket types which simplify the organizational efforts.
For more information on all their event please visit the Astoria-Warrington Chamber of Commerce here: https://www.oldoregon.com/ https://www.facebook.com/AstoriaWarrentonChamber
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