Test Carnival Palm Springs | Palm Springs Carnival
--- PALM SPRINGS: Get out the headdress, beads and your most festive costume. Organizers hope the tentatively named Carnival Palm Springs will become the city's newest signature event. In a presentation to the Palm Springs City Council on Wednesday night, representatives of PS Resorts unveiled a plan for the new event, which was conceived to draw more people to Palm Springs during September, a typically slow month for tourism in the Coachella Valley. The focus will be to provide fun, exciting, attractive components, which will foster repeat visits, said Karl Kruger of KK Hospitality, an adviser for PS Resorts that will produce the event. Slated for Sept. 9-28, it is specifically driven to put heads in beds and will be the model for future events PS Resorts plans to create for the desert's slow summer months, he added. The group expects to spend $150,000 on the event, but estimates it will generate $1.5 million the first year to help bolster the valley's economy. Aftab Dada, general manager of Hilton Palm Springs and chairman of PS Resorts, said the group has been working on developing Carnival Palm Springs for nearly a year and plans to provide more details about the event during the next month. So far, however, Carnival Palm Springs will feature street fairs, parades, live music, galas and exclusive events tied to participating hotels and businesses. PS Resorts is a consortium of 10 Palm Springs resorts, including The Ace Hotel & Swim Club, Alcazar, Colony Palms Hotel, Hilton Palm Springs, Hyatt Regency Suites Palm Springs, Marquis Villas Resort, Palm Mountain Resort, The Parker, The Riviera Palm Springs, and Viceroy. The hotels are partnering as a mutual benefit corporation, officials said. Carnival Palm Springs is inspired by Key West, Fla.'s Fantasy Fest. This 10-day event in October is tied to Halloween and was created to attract business during that city's slow tourism months. This is going to be an exciting new event for Palm Springs, said Councilman Rick Hutcheson, who put out a call last year to local stakeholders to develop money-making events for the city's shoulder season. In an effort to increase tourism during September, one of the slowest months in the Coachella Valley, 10 Palm Spring hotels have partnered to bring a new annual event to the area. The event, Carnival Palm Springs, was presented to the Palm Springs City Council Wednesday night. The Riviera, Alcazar, Colony Palms, The Ace Hotel and Swim Club, The Parker, Hyatt Regency Suites Palm Springs, Hilton Palm Springs, Marquis Villas Resort, Viceroy and the Palm Mountain Resort all teamed up to form the nonprofit Palm Springs Resorts. We have been working on it for 18 months already, and we have modeled Carnival Palm Springs after a very successful event in Key West," said Karl Kruger, a consultant for Palm Springs Resorts. Our event will be created specifically for Palm Springs needs." Key West's event, Fantasy Fest, lasts 10 days and is held in October during the city’s slow season. The festival is a 20-year tradition, which Kruger said now brings $30,000,000 to that community. According to the Fantasy fest website, the tremendous influx in visitors during the 10 days of the festival sustains the local economy until the holiday season begins. The vision for Carnival Palm Springs is to have parades, marches, musical performances and galas, said Kruger Wednesday night. To make the event a reality, Palm Springs Resorts would need some financial backing from the city. Kruger said the group wants the city to use money from the transient accommodation taxes it collects from the eight hotels. The event will be discussed further at next month's meeting, but Palm Springs Resorts remains cautiously optimistic that this attraction will begin Sept. 9, 2012. Scenes at the annual Fantasy Fest event in Key West Florida are often graphic and risque. Thousands of men and women attend, with people often in various stages of nudity. But Fantasy Fest is what the new Carnival planned for September in Palm Springs will be "modeled after," according to what Carnival organizers told the Palm Springs City Council, during the Jan. 5 council meeting. People we spoke with about Carnival expressed mixed feelings. "Well I think it is a good idea; anything that brings people to Palm Springs is a good idea," said resident Don McDonald. Karla Gutierrez is among those who have reservations about seeing anything looking like Fantasy Fest in downtown Palm Springs. "That type of event, like out in the open, I am not personally for it," said Gutierrez. When asked about the possibility of indecent displays in public, the head of the group sponsoring Carnival is now contradicting what the City Council was told about the event. "The event will not be modeled after Fantasy Fest," said Aftab Dada, the Chairman of PS Resorts, a newly formed coalition of tourism professionals in Palm Springs working to bring more revenue generating events to the city. Dada says exactly what Carnival will turn out to be, won't be announced until sometime in February. But he says it will include parades, galas and private parties. The city is pitching in $260,000 in resort fees to support Carnival, and sponsors are negotiating with White Party Entertainment to help promote it. Organizers expect to attract 10,000 people to the fall event, and say it will generate $1.5 million in revenue. Council Member Chris Mills said all public decency laws "will be enforced" during the event in Palm Springs.
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