Last year’s Bluesfest was awarded Australia’s Best Regional Event on Tuesday at the 2013 Australian Event Awards in the category of Best Event State or Territory.
It was up against relatively less iconic events including Blues on Broadbeach Music Festival, South Australian Wooden Boat Festival and Ten Days on the Island.
In accepting the award, festival manager Annika Oman said, ‘I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled I am to be bringing this award back home. It is a huge acknowledgement of what Bluesfest contributes to the region. The economic impact of Bluesfest has so many benefits [for] Byron Bay.’
The back-to-back win follows the event’s environmental acknowledgment with an International Greener Festival Award for the seventh year in a row.
Bluesfest has also recently been nominated for the highly regarded Annual Pollstar Award in the category of the 2013 International Music Festival of the Year for the second year running and is the only Australian music festival nominated in the last two years.
Next up is the NSW Tourism Awards to be held on Thursday November 28 at the Royal Randwick Racecourse, where Bluesfest is nominated in the Major Festival and Events category, the same category that gave it a silver award in 2012 and gold in 2013.
