Re the finances, to answer your second comment first - trying to charge a subscription fee is literally the death knell for any forum, so it's not going to happen. People want free, and they can always go somewhere else- it may not be as good, or as complete, but if you charge, they'll spend an inordinate amount of time looking to save a couple of quid. ESPECIALLY when they're new to the forum, and see a fee charged.

Re the numbers - nowhere near 1000, and the important part is that only about 500 paid, many at discounted early bird rates - the rest are vendors and their staff who paid very little, presenters, clubs, authors and press all get in free, and so on.

Until you've run a big event, you can't begin to comprehend how costly it is. The Donington venue itself is the biggest, but not the only cost of the event - A/V alone is 4.5k, marquee rental, shower and toilet rentals, insurance!, etc. and Sam and Iain don't work for free, but they're desperately underpaid!

Anyway, doesn't matter how you cut it, in the end we just barely broke even, and if the weather forecast had been bad we'd have lost money. Two weeks before the event the weather was so bad that Donington raised the possibility of cancelling our booking so as not to mess up their fields, at which point we would have had to declare bankruptcy. The truth is that we don't have the resources to carry this level of financial risk.

AND we had loads of complaints about the noise, and the food. So, the decision was made to find a new venue - and we've been looking since June, and are still looking - literally a hundred or so hours so far, and not done. We desperately wanted one for 2015, but couldn't make it happen. Who knows, the perfect place might drop into our laps tomorrow and be available too! So keep looking and sending in ideas!

We really appreciate all the positive feedback and it's important to us that people understand this decision wasn't taken lightly. As longtime HU folk know, it's just us two, and we work very hard to make it all happen, and without the volunteers it couldn't be done at all. We've ALWAYS had the best interests of travellers at the centre of what we do, (our first tagline was "travellers helping travellers") but we need to eat and pay the rent, and hopefully put a few pennies aside for an eventual retirement.

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Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com