Questions over failure to optimise audiences for Inveraray’s Connect Festival and Dunoon’s Cowal Gathering

There has long been concern at the scheduling of the Connect Festival at Inveraray for the weekend of 29th August, coinciding with the long established crowd-puller of the Cowal Gathering in Dunoon. It had been assumed that at least advantage would be mined from the parallel Argyll events by providing late-night and Sunday bus services between the two venues, enabling audiences to access both events. West Coast Motors, operators of the normal bus service between Dunoon and Inveraray – which does not now include a Sunday service – say that no approach has been made to them by the organisers of Connect and that they are not in a position to assume the commercial risk alone. Donald Booth, West Coast Motors’ Area Manager for Cowal and Bute, points out that all of the company’s resources are already committed to the Cowal Gathering which, as the long-established event, he sees as the priority. Ron Simon, the Councillor representing Cowal, underlines the sharp conomic reality that where there are competing events in the area every effort needs to be made to optimise the audiences attending both. Argyll is not in a position to afford complacency or missed opportunities.