Urban motorsport festival gives £10m economic turbo boost
Power Maxed MotoFest Coventry, the largest free urban motorsport festival in the UK, has given a £10m boost to the city’s economy, according to research conducted to gauge the economic impact of the festival.
Through data crunching undertaken with Coventry Business Improvement District (BID), sponsors and exhibitors, the Power Maxed MotoFest Coventry team has calculated the overall contribution the festival makes to the local economy.
Based on average spend, business uplift, visitor footfall and hotel occupancy rates, the number crunching has shown the event provides a £10m injection to city profits – only five years after Power Maxed MotoFest Coventry first took to the city’s roads.
The numbers revealed a 35% uplift in spend to city centre businesses during the two days of the Power Maxed MotoFest Coventry festival in June.
For footfall into the city during Power Maxed MotoFest Coventry, visitor numbers received a 25% boost with just over 136,000 people recorded in the city on both days of the festival – the most visitors into Coventry recorded at any time during 2018.
Hotel room occupancy rates for the Power Maxed MotoFest Coventry festival were at 98% – which equates to 4,655 of the 4,706 hotel rooms available in the city being occupied that weekend.
James Noble, Power Maxed MotoFest Coventry festival director, said: “It’s great to know we are providing a £10m boost to the city by filling the tills, hotel rooms and the city centre itself during the festival weekend.
“Working with our partners, we have sought to calculate the impact of the event based on a range of data available to us. Overall we think it’s quite a conservative estimate as we don’t have a complete picture for some areas such as footfall figures.
“For instance there are no footfall cameras in Friargate and Warwick Row but we do know that this is a key event location that attracts large numbers of visitors. So when you factor in missing data from those locations, the 136,000 estimate is probably closer to around 150,000 – which puts us close to Goodwood Festival of Speed visitor numbers.
“The hotel occupancy room rate figures are almost unprecedented for the city and well above the 60 – 65% room occupancy rate normally seen across an average weekend in the city.
“It motivates us to continue developing and growing Power Maxed MotoFest Coventry and reinforcing its status as the largest urban motorsports festival in the UK.”
Coventry BID director Trish Willetts said: “Year after year MotoFest Coventry proves an excellent event for the city bringing in thousands of visitors.
“Many of our businesses had a fantastic weekend at this year’s event, it was extremely successful for them and these figures show that.
“MotoFest puts Coventry on the map and Coventry BID looks forward to continuing our successful partnership with the team and we cannot wait to see what they come up with next year.”
