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Festival Support Pays Off for Award-Winning Hotel

The Trout Hotel in Cockermouth has demonstrated how supporting events that embrace the provenance and quality of local produce can pay dividends for a hospitably business.

The award-winning four star hotel is one of the lead supporters of the Taste Cumbria Festival, which, this year, attracted its highest ever visitor numbers.

The Trout Hotel was fully booked and experienced a ten percent lift in business, from both guests staying for the weekend and people popping into its champagne marquee or into the hotel for a bite to eat and some refreshment.

Approximately 25,000 visitors poured into the historic Georgian town for the weekend, which has established the area as one fast gaining a reputation as a food lovers’ paradise.

As its contribution to the festival, the hotel welcomed famous culinary experts to its Festival marquee.

Fans queued in the marquee, situated in the hotel’s riverside grounds, to meet two of the foodie spectacular’s VIP guests – chefs Simon Rimmer, presenter of Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, and James Martin, host of BBC 1’s Saturday Kitchen.

A night of culinary anecdotes and jazz hosted by Observer food critic Jay Rayner, which also was held in the marquee, was a sell-out success and generated great feedback from those who attended.

Sue Eccles, The Trout Hotel’s Managing Director, said: “The Trout Hotel prides itself on engaging with the wider community and we felt it was important to help champion Taste Cumbria, as well as playing an integral part in the festival’s events.

“The hotel is committed to supporting the local economy with our culinary ethos focusing on the provenance and quality of our food with an emphasis on home grown and locally sourced ingredients.

“Our association with the Taste Cumbria Festival dovetails perfectly with that philosophy. It also attracted additional business particularly visitors and residents, who enjoyed a champagne afternoon tea in our elegant marquee, which was specially set-up for the Festival.”

Mary Houston, Taste Cumbria Food Co-ordinator explains: “We’ve just completed some groundbreaking research which reveals that food tourism is vital to our visitor economy and £429m was spent by visitors to Cumbria on food and drink in 2011. We want to ensure that figure increases and all businesses benefit. Last year’s festival had a net impact of over £5million on the Cumbrian economy and, as we’ve smashed last year’s visitor figures, I think we’re well on target to beat that this year too.”

The festival caused a real buzz throughout the town as tourists and local residents packed into sell-out events, such as cookery demonstrations.

Main Street and the surrounding areas featured hundreds of local producers as well as lively free activities for the whole family.

Although organised by the not-for –profit organisation Taste Cumbria, the festival’s success meant that some exhibitors have even reported taking double the profits of last year.

Taste Cumbria Food Festival was conceived as a project to bring the town of Cockermouth back from the devastating floods of 2009. Now in its third year, the organisation supports all Cumbrian businesses involved in local produce, from farm to fork.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Recognition PR Business Team .