Britain's festival boom: How smaller boutique offerings are proving more popular than holidays abroad

Despite much Morrissey-grade moaning and Ozzy-esque shrieking about the future of the music industry, Britons still love a summer festival – and 45 per cent of regular attendees now opt for a music festival over a summer holiday abroad, according to a 2017 survey by the Association of Independent Festivals (aiforg.com). 

The past decade saw large numbers of British festival-goers turn their backs on potentially soggy, pricey and increasingly corporate UK events in favour of destination festivals such as Barcelona’s Primavera Sound (primaverasound.com), Hideout (hideoutfestival.com) in Croatia and Burning Man (burningman.org) in Nevada. But today, we’re more likely to make our summer festival a staycation. 

The AIF currently puts the number of British independent music festivals at around 1,000, having doubled in the past 10 years. These range from dinky 800-person gatherings, such as family-friendly Starry Skies (starry-skies.net) in the Usk Valley in the Welsh borders, to crowds of 60,000 at high-concept BoomTown Fair (boomtownfair.co.uk) in Hampshire.

Certainly, British festival-goers are no longer primarily pushed through the turnstiles by sheer devotion to their favourite band, nor are they content to drink warm beer and survive on whatever beige fodder the lone food truck hawks in order to get within being-spat-upon distance of their preferred bassist. 

“Fifty per cent of festival-goers buy a ticket based on the overall vibe, feel and character of a festival, with a much higher expectation of the food and beverages,” says Paul Reed, chief executive of the AIF. Today, just seven per cent of festival-goers base their choice on the headline acts.

Britons are using the same criteria as for holidays, with an eye on the accommodation, the food and the surroundings. And small festivals have innovated and expanded to appeal to this new breed of festival holidaymaker; BoomTown Fair, for example, offers a two-day guided bike ride from Bristol to the festival site for ￡69. 

Festivals are no longer glorified gigs; they’re package holidays and lifestyle brands. As with holidaying in a “hot destination” or hip new hotel, there is cultural cache in bagging a ticket to a new boutique festival, finding the food truck with the best pulled pork tacos and shaking the tassels of your vintage suede jacket on Instagram.

Europe's best summer music festivals for 2018

Britain’s festival boom and subsequent glut have given rise to the most varied outdoor music scene on the planet. Today there’s a festival not just for every sort of music-lover, but small events underpinned by eco credentials or by a commitment to families. 

“Most British independent festivals are parties that got out of hand, and became professionalised,” says Reed. “So there’s still that home-grown punk-rock element.”

But in a saturated boutique festival market which has seen many enterprises fail, where should we invest our hard-earned holiday cash? 

With Glastonbury (quite literally the world’s biggest crowd-pleaser) off the menu in 2018, we need to choose our summer festivals wisely, as we are effectively shaping the parties of the future. “In this kind of market, if you’re not doing something unique, you’re not going to be around for very long,” says Reed. 

Sadly, many major music festivals today have a whiff of desperation about them, whereas the smaller ones have managed to stay true to their original ethos – or perhaps they found their ethos along the way, when they stopped drinking for a bit.

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So this summer, we have sustainability superstar Shambala (shambalafestival.org) in Northamptonshire spearheading an initiative to ban single-use plastics from its event, the impeccably curated End of the Road (endoftheroadfestival.com) in Wiltshire sticking strictly to its non-mainstream pop guns, and 2000trees (twothousandtreesfestival.co.uk) in Gloucestershire tirelessly championing underdog – sorry, underground – British music.

Pop music has always been Britain’s biggest cultural export; what we bring to the world’s party is a playlist. 

Now, as festivals evolve, we are also working on our eco credentials, our nibbles and our dinner party conversation.