Organising a music festival, whether it's a relatively small shindig or a massive multi-million dollar extravaganza, is a complex endeavour to say the least. One of the most important aspects of any good music festival which is often overlooked by inexperienced organisers is providing suitable toilet facilities. 

Long lines of festival-goers waiting hours to use highly unsanitary toilet facilities might be one of the more evocative images of festival life, but it is not one that needs to occur at your event. By asking yourself the following questions, you can ensure that all of your attendees have access to clean, comfortable and safe toilet facilities as and when you need them:

How many portable toilets will your festival need?

While there is no such thing as too many toilets at a festival, you will obviously have space and budgetary constraints to deal with, and you should make sure that your limited space and money is capable of providing suitable numbers of toilets for your guests.

The number of portable toilets your festival will require can depend on how long it will last and whether food or drink will be served there, but the most important factor to take into account is the number of men and women you expect to attend.

While the number of toilets you will require for any given festival isn't set in stone, as a general rule you should provide one toilet for every 75 women you expect to attend your event. Since men's bathroom breaks tend to be shorter, they can get away with sharing fewer facilities, and one toilet for every 200-300 guests should be sufficient. Men's facilities can also be augmented with larger, urinal-only toilets, which can accommodate several male revellers at a time and leave more single-user facilities available for your female guests.

Should you provide luxury toilets?

If your festival is a larger event with segregated, VIP areas for wealthier revellers, these guests will probably expect facilities a little more salubrious than the standard plastic box. If you wish, you can provide these guests with luxury portable toilets, which are more spacious and comfortable. However, you should bear in mind that these toilets take up more space and can serve fewer attendees over a given length of time, so it's important not to go overboard if only a limited number of VIPs are expected to attend your event.

Can your toilet areas be accessed by heavy goods vehicles?

One of the most challenging aspects of portable toilet hire for a music festival is getting them into position in the first place, and if your event is set in an isolated locations that lacks extensive paved roads, trucking your toilets in can be very difficult. As such, you may wish to avoid hiring luxury toilets, multi-person urinals and other large, heavy portable toilet facilities if you have no way for trucks to deliver them to their locations. Standard single-person toilets are smaller and lighter, and can be more easily transported by off-road vehicles.