Record attendances at GBBF

August 9, 2006: The 2006 Great British Beer Festival has been hailed as a tremendous success by CAMRA with record attendances reported.

By the end of Saturday evening more than 66,000 people had come through the doors and around 1,500 new members had been signed up to the consumer organisation. Tuesday's trade session alone was attended by more than 5,300.

Festival organiser Marc Holmes said: “This year's attendance has been phenomenal. It is likely that the change of venue from our former home at Olympia and the introduction of third of a pint measures roused peoples' curiosity, and the numbers were way up this year.

“Interestingly, although the attendance figures shot up, the number of pints sold was around what we expected. This means people were drinking responsibly and were more interested in quality rather than quantity.

“The main plan for this year was to have a successful move to Earl's Court and for the festival to open on time on the Tuesday. To have these record figures is a bonus and we are amazed at how popular the festival has become. The work begins now on making it even better for next year.”

Marc added: “I would particularly like to thank all those CAMRA volunteers who have given up their free time to work at the festival - we had the highest number of volunteer staff ever with over 1,000 people working over a ten-day period.”