The Evolving Music Festival Landscape, with Pavan Pardasani of TAO Group

Pavan Pardasani, Chief Marketing Officer, TAO Hospitality Group

The music festival experience today expands well beyond the gates, where offsite VIP parties and hospitality-driven mansion takeovers accommodate a wide array of celebrities and revelers, brands and partners, looking to capitalize on good vibes and experiential.

TAO Hospitality Group, with its portfolio of more than 90 food, beverage and nightlife venues, touches more than 20 markets across the globe. But when it comes to maintaining trust and loyalty year-round, the brand pops up experiences aligned with cultural moments, like music festivals, where it can engage key partners in an experience that breaks through the “four walled” approach of its venues. Think: Transforming a private estate into an influencer oasis; aerial presentations; replicas of the ancient pyramids; and after-hours glam bars.

“Our events our free, the bar is typically complimentary, there’s a seamless arrival process and we really think a lot about how that arrival affects our guest perception of what we’re doing,” says Pavan Pardasani, cmo of TAO Group Hospitality. “But beyond that, what we’ve seen over the last few years certainly is, we’ve really had to step up our game with more activations, and we’ve really had to push our partners and brands to think not just about showing up and having a logo on the step-and-repeat or projecting the logo on the side of a building, but really asking them how they will engage with our guests in meaningful way.”

In this episode, we explore the vast and evolving experiential landscape around music festivals with Pardasani—the opportunities, the partnership strategies, how the music festival space is evolving, what audiences are craving and why invite-only hospitality experiences are thriving. Plus, we explore festival experiential activation tips from Zev Norotsky, founder and ceo of ENTER, our partner on this episode. Grab your best fringe and listen along.