The preparations have well and truly began for the Cheltenham festival week which begins in EIGHT days’ time. For the pubs and bars of the town centre they would of started their preparations months ago.
Montpellier Wine bar general manager Julie Rains gave an insight on how her bar prepares for the festival in March:
“We prepare like we would do from day to day we intend to increase staffing, drinks spend, we spend a lot of time marketing so we make sure everyone knows we are here and it’s brilliant for the business and it’s great for the town and Cheltenham overall really.”
Going off last years figures, the Cheltenham festival week is expecting over 260,000 people and on average 65,000 people each day.
On the Jockey club website, they found that:
134,600 people used the Cheltenham Spa train station over the four days
80,000 used the shuttle bus service between the Racecourse and town centre
36,500 vehicles parked over the four days
100 helicopter movements per day
50 staff coaches per day, sourced from all over the country, as far away as London, Cardiff, Swansea, Birmingham and Coventry
30 extra flights put on by Ryanair on the Dublin to Birmingham route during The Festival™ period (around 20,000 customers will use Ryanair)
71,500 attended Cheltenham on Cheltenham Gold Cup Day
Not only does the Cheltenham festival bring a lot of revenue to the pubs and bars around, but it’s great for building relationships with the punters from the festival so they keep coming back year on year.
For individually owned business’s it can be hard to build up a name, Rains expressed how important it is for the smaller horse racing events leading up to the March races are:
“It’s incredibly important just to keep the hospitality Industry going, I think going especially for sort of the independents and we see a lot of people sort of around November, so it’s a really good way of getting people in and then hopefully getting bookings for the March races going onwards.”
