Pop Up Palm Springs to encourage shopping during festival season
Businesses in the city of Palm Springs are making a push to maximize festival revenue with weekend one of Coachella Music and Arts Festival coming up.
There’s no doubt when it’s the festival season, with crowds flocking to the Coachella Valley filling hotel rooms in Palm Springs, but that hasn’t necessarily meant a boost at local stores.
“A lot of the festival-goers end up going back out of town and some of the locals think it’s too busy to come out, but the truth is that it’s a great time to come downtown,” Jeffrey Bernstein, owner of Destination PSP said.
He’s addressing that issue with the initiative called Pop Up Palm Springs with different stores and restaurants creating their own pop-up event or promotion.
“If you come downtown, it could be something like our chalk artist. There are food tastings, there’s demos, giveaways,” Bernstein said.
For the owner at Crazy Mel’s Burgers and Bar, a business that’s taking part, he says Tuesdays the week of Coachella and Stagecoach can get slow with festival-goers leaving town.
“It’s a hit and miss. If they’re in town, they’re here, if not we miss them. We’re hoping that not only we get the tourists, that we also get the locals,” George Kessinger, co-owner of Crazy Mel’s Burgers and Bar, said.
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ/status/1115364814258200576″,”author_name”:”Jeremy Chen”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;I spoke with business owners in the city of &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/PalmSprings?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;#PalmSprings&#lt;/a&#gt; this morning on how they’re making a push to help boost revenue during the weeks of Coachella. Full story coming up at 5 on &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/KESQ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;@KESQ&#lt;/a&#gt; about Pop Up &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/PalmSprings?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;#PalmSprings&#lt;/a&#gt;. &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/z24VBBzM02″&#gt;pic.twitter.com/z24VBBzM02&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– Jeremy Chen (@JeremyChenKESQ) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ/status/1115364814258200576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;April 8, 2019&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
Around 40 businesses have so far been scheduled to take part in Pop Up Palm Springs in uptown and downtown, and for one local, he says having a presence outside of the storefront is a good idea.
“I would be at the door saying hello and ‘Oh that’s friendly’, and let them come in,” Thomas Golding, a resident of Palm Springs, said.
Bernstein says the hope is Pop Up Palm Springs could eventually turn into a monthly event for businesses.
“The idea of adding a unique experience is something that will get even more people to come out,” he said.
Pop Up Palm Springs is set to happen next Tuesday in between the two weekends of Coachella. We have a link to all of the participating businesses here.
