Food festivals range from local markets to large international events. Recent figures show Qatar’s 2026 festival attracting 490,493 visitors in 10 days, while Taste Cumbria drew more than 25,000 visitors in 2024. Across the available studies, attendance, visitor origin, spending and satisfaction vary substantially by event and location.
Contents
- Attendance and event scale
- Who attends food festivals
- Visitor origins and travel
- Spending and economic impact
- Vendors and exhibitors
- Motivations, satisfaction and repeat intent
Attendance and event scale
The Qatar International Food Festival provides one of the largest recent attendance figures in this collection. Its 2026 edition welcomed 490,493 visitors over 10 days, according to Qatar Tourism’s event announcement. Attendance was 36% higher than the previous edition. The festival featured 246 vendors, while the event announcement reported more than 50 local and international chefs. The vendor count is also listed by Visit Qatar.
Other events illustrate the range of food-festival scale:
- Taste Cumbria in Cockermouth attracted more than 25,000 visitors in 2024, according to Cumberland Council.
- The 2024 Dubai Food Festival ran for 23 days and had a record 769 participating restaurants, as reported in the DET Annual Visitor Report 2024.
- The 2024 National Geographic Traveller (UK) Food Festival recorded 7,280 attendees, according to its event-reported audience figures.
- Welsh Government-supported food festivals evaluated for 2015 ranged from 2,500 attendees to well over 20,000 in footfall. The Food festivals 2015 evaluation covered 25 government-supported festivals, although attendee findings were based on six festivals.
These numbers describe different event types and measurement approaches. A 10-day international festival, a multi-week citywide program and a one-day regional festival should not be treated as directly comparable attendance products.
Who attends food festivals
The available audience data shows strong differences between residents, domestic visitors and international visitors. At Qatar International Food Festival 2026, international visitors accounted for 10% of footfall. Qatari nationals represented 22.1% of attendance and were the largest nationality group reported. Repeat visitors represented 32% of visitors. These figures come from Qatar Tourism.
Bogotá’s Alimentarte Food Festival 2026 had a more locally weighted surveyed audience. Residents made up 84% of surveyed attendees, while visitors made up 16%. International visitors represented 52% of the visitor group surveyed. The Alimentarte Food Festival 2026 report describes results from 1,389 opinion surveys. These are descriptive survey results, not population estimates.
The National Geographic Traveller (UK) Food Festival reported a different audience profile in 2024. Women represented 58% of visitors. People aged 25–34 made up 40% of the audience, followed by visitors aged 35–44 at 29% and visitors aged 18–24 at 12%. The figures are event-reported audience and media-pack statistics from 2024 Food Festival Visitors in Numbers, rather than estimates for the wider population.
| Event and period | Resident or local share | Visitor or international measure |
|---|---|---|
| Qatar International Food Festival, 2026 | 22.1% Qatari nationals | 10% international visitors |
| Alimentarte, Bogotá, 2026 | 84% residents | 16% visitors; 52% of visitors international |
| National Geographic Traveller Food Festival, 2024 | Not reported here | 58% women; 40% aged 25–34 |
Visitor origins and travel
The 2015 Welsh evaluation gives a detailed view of where festival attendees came from. Across six surveyed Welsh food festivals, 29% of attendees were local residents, 22% were county residents, 28% lived elsewhere in Wales and 21% were visitors to Wales. Overall, 70% had attended a Welsh food festival previously. These results apply to the six surveyed festivals within the broader evaluation, not automatically to every Welsh food festival.
Individual events showed different travel patterns. At Abergavenny Food Festival in 2015, 69% of surveyed respondents were making a day visit and 31% were staying overnight. Visitors to Wales represented 27% of surveyed attendees. At Conwy Food Festival, visitors to Wales represented 32% of surveyed attendees. Both figures are from the Welsh Government evaluation.
Taste Cumbria’s 2024 visitor survey found that staying visitor groups represented 9.8% of the sample. At the same event, 79% of surveyed visitors said they came to Cockermouth specifically for the festival. The Cumberland Council report presents these findings alongside independent research into the event’s local economic contribution.
The measures are not interchangeable: an overnight-stay share, a visitor-to-Wales share and a statement about traveling specifically for an event describe different aspects of travel behavior. They do, however, show why festival organizers may need to plan for both nearby residents and destination visitors.
Spending and economic impact
Welsh Government-supported food festivals generated several reported forms of economic activity in 2015. Organiser spending was estimated to create £1.4 million in economic impact. Attendees spent an estimated £3.82 million at the festivals, while visitors attracted from outside Wales were estimated to add £3.7 million to the Welsh economy. Indirect exhibitor sales influenced by the festivals were estimated at £17 million, based on exhibitor perceptions. Extrapolated tourist spending associated with the festivals was estimated at £3.1 million before standard economic multipliers. These estimates and assumptions are described in the Food festivals 2015 evaluation; they should not be read as independently verified totals for all food festivals.
Average planned adult spend varied across the six Welsh festivals surveyed:
- Abergavenny: £35.48
- Conwy: £33.61
- Beaumaris: £21.54
- Narberth: £21.13
- Newport: £19.34
- St Fagans: £17.54
The average planned adult spend across all six was £24.74. These are 2015 planned-spending figures, so they are not equivalent to later measured expenditure or inflation-adjusted purchasing power.
More recent local-impact figures are available for Taste Cumbria. The 2024 event brought £2.2 million into the local economy, according to Cumberland Council. The council also reported nearly £40 in local economic return for every pound spent by organisers on delivery. That return ratio is specific to the reported Taste Cumbria research and should not be generalized to festivals with different costs, visitor profiles or local supply chains.
Bogotá’s Alimentarte report measured tourist spending in Colombian pesos. Tourists reported average total spending of 3,160,502 Colombian pesos and average daily spending of 474,395 Colombian pesos at the 2026 festival. The Alimentarte Food Festival 2026 report does not make these amounts directly comparable with the Welsh pound figures. Currency amounts are retained in their source currencies.
At the 2024 National Geographic Traveller (UK) Food Festival, 63% of visitors stayed an average of two to five hours. Dwell time is not a spending total, but it helps describe the amount of time visitors reported spending at that event. The figure comes from 2024 Food Festival Visitors in Numbers.
Vendors and exhibitors
The Welsh 2015 evaluation estimated that 930 different organisations exhibited at Welsh Government-funded food festivals. Organisations based in Wales accounted for 76% of exhibitors, and almost two-thirds, or 64%, exhibited at only one festival. More than 39% of surveyed exhibitors were less than four years old.
The exhibitor profile was largely made up of small businesses. Among surveyed Welsh food-festival exhibitors, 92% had fewer than 10 employees in 2015, while 40% reported turnover below £25,000. These figures are survey findings for the evaluation and do not describe every food vendor operating today. They do indicate that food festivals can include many small and relatively young organisations alongside established producers.
The Qatar International Food Festival’s 246 vendors in 2026 show how a large international event can concentrate a substantial number of sellers in one program. By contrast, the Welsh evaluation’s 930 organisations was an estimated count across government-funded festivals, not a count of vendors at one event. The two figures therefore describe different levels of event participation.
Motivations, satisfaction and repeat intent
Local food and drink was a major draw in the Welsh survey: just over 60% of attendees across six festivals cited the opportunity to buy local food and drink as a leading reason for attending in 2015. Event reputation was a key attendance factor for 67% of Abergavenny respondents and 62% of Conwy respondents. Location was critical for 59% of Beaumaris respondents, while being local was an attendance factor for 64% of Newport respondents. These findings are reported in the Welsh Government evaluation.
Recent event feedback also shows high stated satisfaction and return intent. At Taste Cumbria 2024, 99% of surveyed visitors said they would return to another Taste Cumbria event, according to Cumberland Council. At the 2024 National Geographic Traveller (UK) Food Festival, 88% of visitors said they were satisfied and 73% said they would recommend the event to a friend, according to 2024 Food Festival Visitors in Numbers.
Return intent, satisfaction and recommendation are survey responses rather than guarantees of future attendance. Their meaning also depends on the question wording, sample and event context. Read together with the attendance and travel figures, they show that a food festival’s reach is measured not only by footfall, but also by who attends, how far they travel, what they spend and whether the experience encourages them to come back.