Date clash a serious stuff up for Hobart's winter tourism industry

The Tasmanian capital of Hobart is extremely quiet for virtually every weekend of winter.

Hotels have empty rooms; restaurants bemoan empty tables.

So the announcement on November 3 that crowd-pulling Dark Mofo, Australia's mid-winter solstice festival, would return to Hobart from Thursday June 11 to Monday June 22 universally welcomed.

Alongside the festival’s large-scale public art installations, will be live performances and exclusive musical acts.

Dark Mofo 2026 will also include familiar rituals: Winter Feast, Night Mass, the Ogoh-Ogoh burning and the Nude Solstice Swim.

Hotels will be full; bars and restaurants heaving.

That only leaves a dozen other weekends when Hobart's tourism operators would welcome some help from other events.

What a wasted opportunity then that after the hapless Tasmanian Government paid a million dollars for Richmond to play one home AFL game in Hobart in 2026, the AFL last week announced its fixture list.

Sure enough, the AFL chose Sunday, June 14, for the Hobart match between Richmond and reigning AFL premiers Brisbane.

Accommodation will be at a premium; many flights will be full with Dark Mofo attendees and any remaining seats will be priced stratospherically.

So who stuffed up? Jane Howlett, minister for tourism and events will plead ignorance. Dark Mofo will say it had announced its dates well in advance.

The AFL, one of the most arrogant sporting bodies on the planet, is unlikely to give a damn.

There will be two victims. The Tasmanian tourism industry. And interstate fans of Richmond and Brisbane. Just another stuff up. A shrug of the shoulders, Just move on.      

Update: London Wine Fair forced to change dates

The London Wine Fair has announced new dates for its 2022 event, which will now run from June 7-19. 

The change comes after the event was blindsided by rival German wine trade fair ProWein. 

Many exhibitors were booked in for both events, which would have clashed. 

 “Our objective is simply to create the best outcome for the wine industry," said Hannah Tovey, event director of London Wine Fair. 

"Being forced to decide between the two events was proving extremely unpalatable and clearly being in two places at once simply isn’t possible. When we pitched the possibility of moving the Fair to June, the response from our exhibitors was a resounding 'yes'."

This was my earlier story: 

Along with the various VinExpo events and VinItaly, the London Wine Fair and ProWein are two of the major wine industry events of the year in Europe. 

So how, then, have the London Wine Fair and ProWein (above) ended up with a date clash? 

It would appear the organisers of ProWein are to blame. 

After two years of cancellations the German trade fair announced this week it had switched its dates from March 27-29 to May 15-17. 

The only problem is that the London event, which has run for 40 years, had already locked in May 16-18. 

ProWein director Bastian Mingers told Drinks Business the Dusseldorf event had selected “the only alternative date” - which seems a little lame. 

Blaming the move on the spread of the Omicron variant in Germany, Wolfram N. Diener, CEO of Messe Düsseldorf – the organisers of ProWein – said that both the fair’s “partners and associations involved” regard the early summer “as the ideal period”. 

London Wine Fair director Hannah Tovey told Drinks Business that she was “confused, bemused, and angry” at the date clash, describing the move as “an extremely aggressive assault on both the London Wine Fair and the UK drinks market.”

Exhibitors, including wine producers from around the world, will have to choose one fair over another, while buyers will be faced with a similar choice. 

ProWein is expected to return to its usual March schedule in 2023.

In the meantime, it appears that all is fair in love and wine.