Water Worx Interview: Ondřej Poláček, Pohoda Festival

The Pohoda Festival is arguably Slovakia’s most famous summer event. The festival has established a strong position in the festival world, not only among our neighbors but throughout Europe. In an interview, producer Ondřej Poláček spoke about sustainability, the challenges of the Trenčín Airport venue, where they draw inspiration from, and where he and his team look for service providers.

The Pohoda Festival takes place at the airport grounds. Every location has its challenges—what are the advantages of the airport for you, and where do you see the risks?

I see a major advantage in the ability to separate visitor and production entrances to the festival grounds. Overall, it’s about organizing transportation, evacuation, and so on. Another advantage is the presence of a concrete surface, which we really appreciate in case of rain. The flat terrain is also a plus. It’s not exactly a perfectly level soccer field, but it’s fine for setting up zones, stages, and everything else.

What do you see as the downsides?

It’s still an airport that serves a completely different purpose for the rest of the year. Planes take off and land there, and certain regulations apply, so you can’t just do whatever you want when building infrastructure for the festival. Plus, the airport falls under the Ministry of Defense. So the downside is that we can’t build infrastructure there that will last for several years into the future. Another disadvantage is that it’s a flat surface, and that’s a problem in the summer during thunderstorms with strong winds.

That brings me to my next question. The promotional nightmare you went through in the past. I won’t ask about what everyone already knows from the media. I’m interested in how those events influenced your approach to production and safety. How did you overhaul your protocols for evacuation and securing structures? Or were you already prepared for that, and it’s no longer possible to make changes?

Many of the safety measures were developed in response to a similar tragedy that occurred at the festival in 2009. Visitor safety is our top priority. We have a long-standing partnership with hydrometeorologists, who are on-site throughout the festival and have set up their operations in the airport control tower. From there, they provide us with regular forecasts and warn us of any potential weather-related threats. Additionally, we have established practices in place, including a control room and crowd assistants; construction sites are supervised by an independent construction inspector, and safety parameters are prioritized when selecting construction contractors. We also consider the cooperation and approach of local law enforcement agencies to be excellent. And these are just some of the measures we monitor on an ongoing basis to manage safety. Despite this, during Pohoda 2024, a storm (which later turned out to be a phenomenon known as a downburst) caused the festival’s largest arena to collapse, resulting in injuries and the subsequent premature cancellation of the festival. A wave of cooperation and public support helped us come to terms with this experience and begin preparations for the next edition. We were also fortunate that none of the injuries were fatal. As for safety measures, the decision to organize the next edition naturally came with a commitment to responsibly address what had happened. We collaborated with colleagues from Safety Crew to evaluate our safety protocols and implement new measures. Based on these experiences, for example, we placed greater emphasis on communication and awareness, with the goal of improving our ability to respond to crisis situations. This event also revealed certain risks related to our infrastructure. During the storm, there was an outage in the fixed power grid and, for a short time, in the communications infrastructure as well. This led us to the necessity of backing up critical infrastructure. Of course, we also focused more intensely on the safety of the structures and constructions themselves. In 2024, what happened happened—the festival’s largest structure collapsed. I’m sorry about that, and it’s hard to come to terms with. I don’t want to downplay it; people were injured, but fortunately, nothing fatal happened. It gave us a chance to see or experience such a crisis situation from an organizer’s perspective—to see what works and what doesn’t. So after that year, we tried to process it and discuss it from a practical standpoint. We consulted with Martin Kralovič and Braňo Tichý, who are well-known in the Czech Republic and ensure safety at festivals. They drew up a series of measures for us on how to improve certain things. It’s important to us that people come back satisfied and not from the hospital. So, of course, we’re trying to anticipate so that nothing like this happens again, and to reduce the overall injury rate among visitors and increase their safety.

Let’s get back to production. Trenčín Airport is ideally located in terms of its proximity to the borders of the Czech Republic, Austria, and Hungary. Do you work with foreign suppliers of equipment, security, cleaning services, etc.?

Our supplier research also includes neighboring countries, and historically we’ve often had suppliers from abroad. These are often services that aren’t readily available in our region. Hungary and Poland are larger markets, so there’s good availability there when it comes to sanitation, for example. When it comes to innovation, we tend to look toward Western Europe—specifically Germany and the Netherlands. But from my perspective, the availability of many things in Slovakia is improving. Things that used to have to be sourced from abroad can now be secured locally.

In my view, Pohoda is a “green festival.” Is it true that sustainability and other social issues are an important aspect for you?

These are mostly specific activities or projects that we test out for one year—if we evaluate them as successful, we usually continue with them. These are social responsibility topics, which I would also include ecology under. We try to collaborate with a public bus operator, and when possible, with a railway partner as well. For the past two years, we’ve also organized a bike peloton from Bratislava, and this year even from Žilina. 150 cyclists participated, which is a great number. Additionally, we use solar lighting to illuminate the venue, which is now more accessible than before. We were also among the first to use returnable cups, which are standard today. Here in Slovakia, we have a deposit system for returnable containers. This applies to beverage containers: cans and PET bottles. This works well in supermarkets, where they typically deduct the deposit from your purchase. But that system isn’t designed for festivals. That’s why we gave visitors the option to donate their returnable containers to a specific cause. We then return them, and the proceeds go to a fundraiser for Ukraine.

So do you also have charity programs that allow people to donate money to good causes?

Every year at the festival, we have a nonprofit zone where individual organizations can present themselves and organize their own fundraisers. We also give space to Ukrainian projects, because this is a very important issue for us. Aside from the obvious moral aspect, Ukraine is our neighbor, where we have many friends and acquaintances from the local music scene.

At Pohoda, you collaborate with our company, Waterworx. What do you see as the benefits of this collaboration?

I definitely see it as a positive. Since Waterworx has been handling our waste and water management—specifically regarding flush toilets—we no longer have to deal with the issues we faced every year before. Like clogged pumps, etc. Just solving this problem alone is a huge plus for us. Of course, every year we explore further opportunities for broader collaboration, especially given that market demands are gradually changing in this sector as well. So we’ll see what the future brings and what we can agree on. I consider you professionals in what you do and in your efforts to develop your offerings.