In the beginning, there was an app. It was built to connect people who need music with people who provide music. Throwing a big ole party in the form of a music festival to promote the launch of this app sounded like the perfect way to introduce the industry to a great product. Score for the marketing team.
But then, it couldn’t just be a music festival, it needed to be a luxury music festival… a luxury destination music festival… where famous rappers and beautiful models frolic with other festival goers in the white sand and crystal clear water… and the pigs! Everyone gets to swim with pigs, and cruise on yachts, and lounge around in villas, and drink cocktails all day, and have the event catered by world-renowned chefs using premium imported ingredients.
All this would be carried out by people who never put on a festival of any sort before, on an island not equipped to handle a crowd of more than 6,000 people. We know how it all turned out for Fyre festival. It was a foolish, beautiful illusion.
VICTIM 1: THE ENVIRONMENT
Now, try to figure out what happened to everything they left behind. It looked like a hurricane hit Great Exuma in April 2017.
It looked like a hurricane hit because festival organizers used hurricane relief shelters as the “luxury tent” accommodations for festival attendees. There were blow up mattresses, bedding, and pillows left behind. School style metal lockers that were never used lay in heaps. A stage was erected for musicians who never played.
Organizers never had to worry about lack of showers and toilets, or running water not being available in the area where they were holding the event because everyone got off the island as soon as they could. There were used portable toilets left behind, food and drinks containers from the hundreds of people who did come. Roker’s Point sits on bluffs overlooking the ocean, what was the environmental damage of all the waste left behind?
According to the United Nations Environment Programme:
“If it is to be sustainable in the long run, tourism must incorporate the principles and practices of sustainable consumption. Sustainable consumption includes building consumer demand for products that have been made using cleaner production techniques, and for services – including tourism services – that are provided in a way that minimizes environmental impacts. The tourism industry can play a key role in providing environmental information and raising awareness among tourists of the environmental consequences of their actions. Tourists and tourism-related businesses consume an enormous quantity of goods and services; moving them toward using those that are produced and provided in an environmentally sustainable way, from cradle to grave, could have an enormous positive impact on the planet’s environment.”
Tourism can have a disastrous environmental impact if not properly managed. The Fyre Festival is a perfect example of monumental mishandling of an event. We looked, but we couldn’t find the answer to what seemed like a simple question: who cleaned up after the Fyre Festival?
VICTIM 2: LOCAL BUSINESS OWNERS
Maryann Rolle, now famous from Netflix’s documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, is the owner of Exuma Point Bar and Grill. With little time to prepare, she was tasked with providing sustenance to festival goers after Fyre organizer Billy McFarland fired the catering company originally slated. Rolle was never paid by Fyre. A GoFundMe page was set up to help reimburse her and others on Great Exuma for out-of-pocket expenses including hotel stays, product, and wages.
Wage theft was another heap of garbage Fyre Fest left behind. People on the island worked for weeks to erect the tent city of Fyre Fest and they were never paid. Damages have been awarded in American courts to Americans defrauded by Billy McFarland. Damages need to be awarded to the Bahamians who provided goods and services of which McFarland and all the other Fyre employees and attendees on the island took full advantage.
VICTIM 3: A NATION’S REPUTATION
Instead of seeking legal retribution, the Bahamians are trying to reassure the world that this disaster was not theirs.
Tourism is an extremely important component of the GDP of The Commonwealth of the Bahamas. Made up of approximately 700 cays (pronounce KEYS), islands, and islets atop an ancient coral reef, the Bahamas are well known as a private place for a luxury vacation. Most of the area is uninhabited or privately owned, but the tourism industry employs many of the inhabitants on the rest of the islands directly and indirectly. Weeks went by and the Bahamians working for Fyre didn’t get paid for labor they already provided. How do they make that money back?
VICTIM 4: THE APRIL FOOLS
In April of 2017, a small group of people convinced themselves and others that throwing a bunch of money around would magically manifest one of the most amazing product launches the world had ever seen. It didn’t work.
Island residents worked hard, opened their homes to strangers, fed them, gave them drinks– all in good faith that they would be repaid. They are still waiting.
Fyre Festival goers were promised a beautiful illusion, but that’s all it ever was. They paid handsomely for quite an experience. They didn’t get what they expected, and plenty of people laughed at them for believing any of it existed in the first place.
Resources:
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/eco-tour/envi/four.html
https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/fyre-festival-great-exuma-bahamas-tourism
http://www.tribune242.com/news/2017/may/23/bahamian-vendor-outrage-100k-fyre-festival-debts/
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/fyre-festival-documentary-review-capitalism
https://sustainabletourism.net/?sustainable-tourism/islands/
https://traveltips.usatoday.com/effects-tourism-caribbean-63368.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055478/
https://www.sandals.com/emerald-bay/