Fly Luftansa To The Reeperbahn

The organisers of Hamburg’s Reeperbahn Festival are close to a deal with national airline Lufthansa that’ll enable music fans throughout Europe to get a cheap trip to the three-day event.

The package will include a round-trip flight, festival access and free local public transport, and will come out at no more than euro 180.

Discussions are still ongoing for 14 airports to offer the deal, including major international terminals in England, France, Holland, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Hungary and Russia.

The two English airports are expected to be Manchester and London-Heathrow.

Alexander Schulz of Inferno Events, which runs the 2-year-old event in cahoots with fellow Hamburg promoter Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion, said he’s kept hotels out of the deal because people will probably prefer to make their own accommodation arrangements to suit their own pockets. But the festival has several hotels on its Web site to help punters choose.

Although last year’s inaugural Reeperbahn Festival was a hit with the media, Karsten Jahnke and his team are already re-jigging the event for its second year.

"Everybody had great fun, but we did lose money," he explained. The September 21-23 event went ahead without a major sponsor because it hadn’t been possible to get one on board in time.

"It may be that we’ll also move it from September because it came after the festival season and before the autumn touring really starts," he explained. This year’s event has been moved back a week, putting it nearer to the European autumn touring season and avoiding another clash with Berlin’s Popkomm trade fair and conference.

Pulling 3,000 payers per day was the only downside as 390 journalists, many from outside Germany, tuned up to see 200 acts spread across the bars and clubs of one of the world’s most famous red light districts.

Jahnke said 6,000 per day would have been enough to break even, so a major sponsor wouldn’t need to dig too deep into its pockets.

Christian Gerlach from Jahnke’s office is finalising the number of venues that will be involved this year (September 27-29) and starting to negotiate with acts.

The venues are likely to include Angie’s Nightclub, D-Club, Große Freiheit 36, Grünspan, Kaiserkeller, Knust, Mandarin Kasino, Molotov, Prinzenbar, Schmidts Tivoli, Spielbudenplatz, Uebel & Gefährlich and Turmzimmer.