Entertainment announcement to boost Gold Coast

Award season is always an exciting time of year. – when the entertainment industry distributes accolades to the best and brightest in the industry at film festivals and music awards, everyone wants to watch. While award ceremonies draw hundreds or thousands of fans, celebrities and artists, not many consider the impact from a commercial real estate perspective.

Of course, with an influx of both local and overseas tourists, it's understandable that the area hosting an awards show will experience  heavy demand – hotels booked out, restaurants packed and entertainment venues pushed to accommodate the masses. There's also nowhere better to host these events than the Gold Coast, which might explain why two new events have been announced in the region, due to draw huge crowds in 2017. 

Screen your film for all of Surfers Paradise 

For the budding filmmakers on the Coast, submissions are now open for the 15th annual Gold Coast Film Festival, running 19-30 April. Screening across five venues along the Gold Coast, this year's festival screened an impressive 38 films from 15 different countries, with attendance figures reaching over 14,000 across all the venues. 

Lucy Fisher, festival director, says the location makes sense and is a good opportunity to showcase Queensland filmmakers, according to if.com.au.

"We're growing fairly quickly," Fisher said. "In terms of the Queensland landscape, we're in a really strong position as an international film festival."

Running at the same time will be the Shorts in Paradise Festival (SIPFest). Held on Surfers Paradise Beach on 23-24 April, the short film festival is no less of a draw than the headline film festival, according to Fisher.

"We did that for the first time on the beach this year and we had over 2,000 people attend," she said. "We had filmmakers from all across Australia and it was pretty spectacular."

The jury for 2017's SIPFest will include Thomas Grimshaw, Sophie Mathisen, Nadine Bates, and Kasie Morre, Screen Queensland's vice president of development and production. Grimshaw, the international programmer for the London Short Film Festival, became involved after meeting Fisher at a training course in Croatia.

"I was fortunate enough to be among 25 either film festival directors or programmers or key development execs, and I met one of the event producers for London Short Film Festival at that event and we developed a little partnership going forward," Fisher said. 

Entries for the 2017 GCFF and SIPFest close 18 February.

Gold Coast Music Awards set to hit Surfers in 2017

After a sold-out 2016 awards ceremony, the 2017 Gold Coast Music Awards (GCMA) has announced a partnership with Surfers Paradise Alliance, a boost that will see the GCMA move to the beautiful spot of Surfers Paradise Beach. 

According to Scenestr, the ceremony – set to take place on 27 April – will be staged just before the launch of Surfers Paradise LIVE 2017, a live music festival that will feature international popstars, the Brisbane-born duo The Veronicas.

"We'll have a massive stage at the end of the mall where we'll showcase some of the best Gold Coast bands," said Chloe Popa, GCMA co-founder.

"And adjacent to that, we'll have our VIP marquee to present our awards in front of the music industry. This move means we can open the awards up to a much bigger audience: Gold Coasters will be able to come along for free and discover their new, favourite, local band."

The SPL2017 festival will run from 28-30 April. 

With these three events drawing massive crowds, the supporting restaurants, cafes and businesses will no doubt see an impressive spike, also. As such, this could be the perfect time to invest in commercial property as Surfers Paradise looks to heat up and become even more popular in the new year. 

For the best commercial property advice, get in touch with the commercial team at Ray White Surfers Paradise today.