Rosemount Hotel yesterday listened to its patrons, who decided for the venue that it should not screen the Melbourne Cup.
The Melbourne Cup is the most famous event on the Australian horse racing calendar, and one that attracts global attention. While many people love the race, with each year it becomes increasingly divisive, with many opponents to the race worried about the treatment of the horses participating in the Cup, and in horse-racing in general. This year, social media has spurned a significant campaign against it, called Nup to the Cup.
While a particularly profitable event on the sporting calendar for pubs around the country, for weeks before the race, Rosemount Hotel in North Perth received several emails checking to see if the venue would be screening the race, and others advocating that the venue shouldn’t.
With so many mixed responses, the venue’s operators decided to poll its patrons and leave the decision about the race’s screening in their hands.
“It certainly wasn’t a decision that Rosemount Hotel made. The qualification needs to be made that Rosemount asked the community and our followers and they made the decision, and we abided by it. If you’re not going to listen to your customers, then who are you going to listen to?” stated Andrew Ryan, director of Cool Perth Nights, which looks after programming, marketing and PR for Rosemount Hotel.
After posing the question on the hotel’s Facebook page, patrons responded with “near unanimity”, with 400 people voting against the race being screened, and only handful voting for it.
With that decision made by its patrons, the Melbourne Cup was not screened at the hotel, but Ryan and the team made the point of also ensuring that they did not alienate people who are in favour of the Cup.
“It was a standard lunch. Not bigger than usual, not smaller than usual. We certainly didn’t engage or lunge in the other direction. We didn’t brand it ‘Nup the Cup’. I know that there’s decent people on both sides of the fence here, so we didn’t want to lunge falsely in either direction.”
Rosemount Hotel thanked its patrons on Facebook for making their voices heard and deciding the matter. The response from patrons has been overwhelmingly positive.
Image courtesy of Facebook.