LEISURE & RETAIL
WHY FESTIVAL TOILETS NEED A HEADLINE ACT
Summer is traditionally the time when music festivals and other outdoor events take place. However, toilets at such venues are notorious for being crowded, messy and unsanitary. Lee Radzki, from Tork manufacturer Essity, considers how they could be improved.
Long queues for overflowing toilets that are rarely checked or cleaned – this is the prevailing theme running through online reviews of festival toilets.
Some people complain about having to miss whole acts while being forced to wait for 30-minutes plus in the washroom queue. One disgruntled visitor likened the toilets at Cheltenham Festival - a racing event held in March – to a First World War latrine.
Some people also claim to have left an event a day early purely because they found the toilets just too unsanitary.
Festival washrooms are notorious for being crowded, messy and unsanitary and an unpleasant visit could colour one’s whole experience. Poor washrooms ranked higher on people’s lists of festival negatives than factors such as crowd disorder and poor food and drink options in a series of surveys commissioned by Tork. One study revealed that 44% of visitors avoided using the washrooms altogether when attending an open-air event.
And 20% said they deliberately refrained from drinking to avoid having to use the loo. Besides potentially leading to dehydration in hot weather, a large-scale drink veto would have a disastrous impact on the bar profits of any venue.
Many festivals now offer VIP packages which include luxury washrooms alongside other perks. But these are unaffordable for many, particularly after having paid a premium for the event ticket itself.
Entry to the Latitude Festival Luxury Loo - which has a dedicated cleaning team and bespoke toiletries – this
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year costs £40 for the duration of the event, for example. And the superior washrooms at Lakefest, which come as a package with a bespoke bar and comfortable viewing platform, costs upwards of £99.
So, what makes festival washrooms so problematical? And what can be done to improve them?
The sheer volume of people wanting to use the washrooms at once – either before or after the event or between acts – is the chief issue. Peaks in traffic create maintenance headaches for cleaners while also putting pressure on supplies of toilet paper, hand towels and soaps. They can also lead to blockages which will put some cubicles out of action, creating longer queues for the ones that remain in service.
Hand drying often leads to queues, particularly in a washroom where air dryers are installed because these take at least 10 seconds to dry the hands. Some stadiums opt instead for supplying loose hand towels and leaving them on the units for visitors’ use. But these create a messy environment since visitors will pick up one or two in a hurry and perhaps drop others on the floor in their impatience to return to the action.
After a lengthy wait to use the loo, some visitors might be tempted to carry out a cursory hand wash so that they can hurry back to their seats. This will result in poor hygiene outcomes while people might also leave behind messy sinks, running taps and discarded hand towels in their haste to leave the facilities.
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