Music festivals in the United Kingdom are booming, and not just due to the electric-oriented rock bands adjusting their amplifiers to 11.
More and more people are attending summer music festivals throughout the country, and since not everyone wants to deal with the possibility of bad weather, hoteliers have a chance to reap the benefits.
Staying in a hotel overnight and then attending the rock festival during the day might not be the coolest thing to do if you want to be “down with the kids,” but many people do exactly that. The alternative is you get to enjoy such delights as crawling in traffic to find a camping spot at minimum five miles from the main stage, queuing up in front of miles of public urinals and “bathroom” lines every morning and slowly covering every possession you own in several layers of British mud.
The government now has published a report on the importance of live music to the U.K. economy in cooperation with lobbying group U.K. Music, and the statistics for 2015 are surely impressive enough to make hoteliers think of how they can benefit.
Among the findings:
- 3.7 million people attended a festival in 2015;
- music tourism generated £3.7 billion ($4.9 billion) in total direct and indirect spend, an increase of 7% from 2014;
- music tourists from overseas increased by 16% to 767,000 (in venues above 1,500 capacity);
- 39,034 full-time jobs are sustained by music tourism; and
- £852 ($1,123) was the average spend by an overseas music tourist, which was an increase of 13% from 2014 (in venues above 1,500 capacity).
Just like taxes and death, one of the only other things anyone can be sure of in this life is that it will rain on at least one day of the Glastonbury Rock Festival, the event that really started the whole music festival bandwagon.
There will certainly be additional demand for hotel stay for those events close to a major city or town. While Glastonbury is held in the middle of nowhere, hotel demand is more likely for the equally celebrated Reading Festival, which is within travel distance of London.
Glamping has become a regular feature of music festivals, and while that does not mean revenue for traditional hotel companies, maybe an enjoyment of such alternative accommodations will sow the seeds in hotel guests of the future.
Festivals have become must-attends, with most tickets for these three-day events selling out long before anyone knows who is playing at them. But for older guests still clinging onto their youth, or simply still enjoying music, attending these events is a tempting proposition.
My small festival claim to fame
In my distant youth, in 1988 at the Reading Festival, I attended the very first day the burgeoning “alternative music” scene was allowed on a festival lineup. Until then, festivals preserved what many considered to be dinosaur bands, all seemingly happy to play five-hour sets of perhaps three songs—Emerson, Lake and Palmer; Gong; Hawkwind; IQ; Man; Pendragon, that kind of thing.
Instead, my day included Iggy Pop, The Godfathers, The Wonderstuff and Ramones, among others.
I had traveled down from Scotland the night before, so I stayed at a hotel, and I am pretty sure it was a Swallow Hotels property. That’s a brand for older listeners.
The festival day after I went—no one I knew stayed for this or the third day—Meat Loaf was bottled off the stage—there is, of course, nothing to be proud of here—for having the temerity to be Old School. Such was the dismay at that ’88 line up—Star Ship! Bonnie Tyler!!—that the following year the bill was all independent/alternative bands, and every festival ever since pretty much has replicated that recipe.
That is until a few years ago.
Now festivals have been marketed to attract families and older attendees, featuring all the usual up-and-coming bands and classic “indie” superstars. But they also include a “Legends’ Slot,” a title that covers a multitude of sins—lately, Dolly Parton, Lionel Ritchie and Electric Light Orchestra.
Is the average Dolly Parton fan far more likely to stay in a hotel than in a flimsy tent with wet sides? Chances are, yes.
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Email Terence Baker or find him on Twitter.
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