Tasting Australia festival in Adelaide pushed back to 2021 due to COVID-19 uncertainty
The organisers of Tasting Australia have decided to postpone the event until 2021 due to uncertainty and financial constraints created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The organisers of Australia’s premier eating and drinking festival, Tasting Australia presented by RAA Travel, have decided to postpone the event until 2021 due to uncertainty regarding gatherings and financial constraints created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The event had been pushed back from March of this year to October, but will now run from 30 April-9 May, 2021.
The decision comes as a result of uncertainty about when restrictions on larger gatherings and domestic and international travel can be eased. Business owners have also expressed a need to focus on rebuilding their businesses.
“While we can now see a path forward, it will take some time for our producers and businesses to get back on their feet,” festival director Simon Bryant said.
“I believe that delaying Tasting Australia to 2021 will give businesses the time they need to heal and rebuild, allowing them to fully leverage and engage with the festival – and to properly prepare for and embrace all its wonderful possibilities.”
Events South Australia executive director Hitaf Rasheed echoed Mr Bryant’s comments. “Right now, businesses are focusing on recovery as they re-open to customers and adapt to a new way of working, through no fault of their own, to ensure the safety of the community,” she said.
“We want to do all we can to support these businesses through the greatest economic challenge of our time,” she added.
Some smaller events that were part of the original 2020 program will go ahead in October, within Government guidelines and with the support of the Tasting Australia team as part of a program called Tasting Australia Local.
Lottery cancelled
Meanwhile, the financial downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has also resulted in the postponement until early 2021 of the TelethonSA Home & Land Lottery.
Robyn Nash, manager of the TelethonSA lottery, said the TelethonSA board took the decision due to the risks involved in making “quite a large financial outlay” to run the lottery in the wake of the devastating bushfires over summer and the COVID-19 pandemic.
She said that every TelethonSA charity supporter had been contacted and all supported the idea of postponing the lottery. “Our sponsors have been hit (by the economic downturn), too,” Ms Nash said.
Tickets for this year’s lottery were not due to go on sale until August.
In a statement, the South Australian not-for-profit organisation said: “Due to current economic conditions brought about by the devastating bushfires over summer and now the coronavirus pandemic, the TelethonSA board has taken the prudent action of postponing our annual Home & Land Lottery until early in 2021. We feel that to run the lottery at this time when so many people are hurting financially would not only be insensitive but also a financial risk.”
TelethonSA has supported South Australian charities since 1960.
A decision is yet to be made by the The Women’s & Children’s Hospital fundraising committee on whether to hold a WCH Foundation Home Lottery this year. Head of fundraising at WCH, Corinne Habel, noted that the innaugural WCH lottery was held last year so it is not yet established as an annual charity event.