P.E.I’s family fun fair — the Provincial Exhibition and Old Home Week — has announced it will be decreasing the price of early bird weekly passes.
Advance passes will now cost $25, down $5 from the original announced price but up $4 from last year’s early bird price.
The advance passes are on sale until July 31 and then will cost $40 on August 1, all passes include HST.
Rayanne Frizzell, manager of Old Home Week, said the change came after a meeting between the P.E.I. Provincial Exhibition, Red Shores and members from the P.E.I. standardbred community.
“We got a call that the horsemen would like to meet over the pass prices. After the meeting we sent them a proposal saying we could do an (advance) pass at $25, and they accepted that offer.”
Last year, passes were $21 before July 31 and $30 after. This year’s increase is because of the newly introduced HST.
“HST is the biggest factor this year because we have to account for that, at the same time the cost to put on the event continues to rise as well.”
Eighty per cent of the P.E.I Provincial Exhibitions revenue is through the gate.
“We make the money by people coming, we’re not heavily funded by government or any other parties putting money into it. We need the people to come to the gate to pay for it,” said Frizzell.
“There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle, whether it be the agriculture show or the harness racing they're all a piece of the puzzle that makes the event the success that it is,” said Frizzell. “We wouldn’t one piece of the puzzle more important than any other.”
Frizzell said it’s not just horsemen who have to pay for passes.
“Our exhibitors that come to show their horses or their cattle, they all purchase passes and they're paying to come and show their animals here.”
Last year Old Home Week sold more than 6,600 weekly passes and more than 5,200 of those were bought at the early bird price.
The provincial exhibition costs $650,000 to put on and it kicks back $6.5 million to the province in economic impact.
“We would love if we could make it free admission. That would be a fantastic thing, but at the end of the day we have expenses that we have to cover,” Frizzell said. “That’s not saying down the road it won’t be possible (to decrease admission prices)."
