On Saturday, the ILT’s Not The Bluff Oyster Festival promoted an experience for locals and visitors who were planning to attend the Bluff event, which was cancelled due to health and safety concerns around the Club Hotel building, which hosts the festival.
ILT marketing and innovation executive Angee Shand said the tour was created not to compete with or replace the festival, but as something to cater for people who wanted to have an "oyster experience".
"We only do it when the Bluff oyster festival isn’t going because we want to work in conjunction with those guys down there.
"We need to celebrate these things every year because they’re amazing and they’re so unique to Southland and to our Bluff — so this is just us getting in behind what is beautiful southern produce."
About 90 people hopped on to a bus and visited five mystery locations throughout the day, she said.
Invercargill woman Nicola Wills said she expected a great day out.
"Let’s celebrate the Bluff oyster.
"As a good and proud Southlander, this is an opportunity for us to come and celebrate the oyster.
"Obviously the oyster festival was unable to go ahead this year, but [it still was] a fantastic opportunity ... for us to still be able to celebrate it at that time of year."
Sarah Hamilton had been into the real festival before, but decided to jump in this event to do something different.
The event was part of the inaugural Great South’s Taste Southland festival which aimed to retain some of those people who were coming into the region and had already booked accommodation, event manager Karen Whitham said.
"Moving forward, the idea is to have the oyster festival as the anchor event as we want to continue to support them, followed by a number of other food opportunities that people could engage with while they were in the region.
"It is not to replace it [the oyster festival], not to adjust it, but to enhance it," she said.
