More than 250,000 people will attend this year’s Bluesfest by the time the event wraps up this weekend after 9 days of headliners, food trucks and stifling heat, and the festival is gearing up for what’s expected to be its biggest night on Friday.
Performers like Wilson, Hozier, Turnstile, Shania Twain and Def Leppard have taken to the main RBC stage, with more to come, including Sean Paul on Thursday, followed by Green Day on Friday and Papa Roach on Saturday. The festival will conclude on Sunday with Kaytranada.
Spokesperson Joe Reilly said the festival has made a full recovery since the pandemic, and has been in full swing for a few years now. This year, the festival will likely hit its usual average of approximately 250,000 attendees, with the biggest turnout for Green Day — Reilly said they estimate more than 25,000 will come out for the California rock band.
“If you look across the headliners, there’s a definite effort to make sure everybody feels there’ys something for them,” said Reilly. “We had classic rock with Def Leppard, for example. And then there’s four stages running all night, every night.”
The heat wave and isolated thunderstorms in Ottawa haven’t deterred attendees, either; Reilly said the Bluesfest team works with meteorologists to monitor the weather specific to LeBreton Flats.
He also said the festival is only possible due to volunteers. This year, the event expanded across both lanes of the Kichi Zībī Parkway to accommodate more people, and grown to about 2,000 volunteers.
“This is a community festival, and the community helps to make it happen through the thousands of volunteers that come out every year and do everything from working in our bars to backstage hospitality for artists to the green team, who clean up the site every day and who actually do go through the refuse bags and separate recycling,” said Reilly. “Some people question whether all those different bags around the city and stuff get checked out or not, but ours definitely do. So that component of the festival is critical.”
Festivals like Bluesfest are known in the tourism industry as a marquee event, one that draws large crowds from both within the city and outside, says Jerome Miousse, director of public affairs at Ottawa Tourism.
“Ottawa is known for Bluesfest just as much as it’s known for the Tulip Festival, and just as much as it’s known for Winterlude,” he said. “These events are the ones that draw the most visitors to our city and are major contributors to our visitor economy to Ottawa, because they’re the best at drawing people and also triggering a decision for people to come to Ottawa for a time bound, specific event.
“They’re prepared for it in advance, like even before the Bluesfest lineup is out, they know that they will come to Ottawa for that.”
Nearly 80 per cent of Bluesfest attendees each year are repeat customers, according to Bluesfest’s data.
Although it can be difficult to track how much traffic is a result of the festival, Miousse said the tourism industry as a whole brings approximately $2.6 billion to the local economy annually.
Data from Bluesfest found that festival-goers create an economic impact of approximately $40 million each year.
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe shared photos of the Hozier concert on his social media channels and said Bluesfest is just one of the events that makes Ottawa a “music city”.
“It’s a great example of a time-bound reason for people to come from other places and choose Ottawa as their destination,” said Miousse. “It’s super important to our visitor economy, because they’re yearly events that support many jobs in the city, and they showcase our city’s cultural scene, musical scene, and all of that.
“It makes the city much more lively,” he added. “People want to come for that, and they’re able to plan in advance to come for it as well.”
