Popular Waterford festival set recording-breaking attendance in 2024 as crowds doubled

Waterford has just celebrated its first year under the title of the European City of Christmas and the 12th year of the Winterval Festival, and new record-breaking data released shows that over 1.8 million visitors joined in on the festive celebrations.

The data was collected via a Smart City Data Collection which is operated by Three Data Analytics on behalf of Waterford City and County Council. It enables the City to view the number of unique visitors to the area who have a mobile phone, thereby ensuring that each person counted is done so on a unique basis.

Winterval commenced on November 15th and ran over weekends for 5 weeks plus six consecutive for the last days of the pre-festive period; it has seen the number of people coming to enjoy the festival in 2024 double compared to 2023, along with an increase in ticket sales to the variety of Winterval Festival events. 

Data shows that 3% of the visitors to Winterval were from overseas with the UK, Netherlands and the US featuring highly as the visitor's country of origin followed by France and Spain and 97% are from all across Ireland, with a large proportion of these visitors from the Southeast region and also from Dublin. 

5% of attendees to Winterval were overnight visitors (accounting for 53,000 people) to the festival with the remainder being daytrippers.

Upon winning the European City of Christmas title the Winterval Directors John Grubb and Trevor Darmody along with Waterford City and County Council set about placing the bar high, with ambitions of attracting more visitors to Waterford for the festive season, and the visitors numbers released have not only broken all records but also all goals set for 2024.

Speaking of the event's success the Festival Directors, John and Trevor say, “We set out with some major ambitions to deliver a magical and fun-filled festival that would attract visitors to enjoy Christmas in Waterford plus we also added some night time economy events, like the Winterval Big Top Live gigs to bring in a new audience segment to the festival, and all of this has paid off greatly. 

“We are delighted with the visitor numbers even with weather 2 storms during the festival. We would like to thank everyone who came along to enjoy Winterval and all of those businesses and sponsors who support Winterval, too. Waterford now holds the title of European City of Christmas for life, so we look forward to building upon that even further for 2025.”

The festival also achieved an increased digital footprint with over 3 million unique visitors to the website and social media plus international and national media coverage, with glowing articles on Winterval featuring in The Irish Independent, The Irish Examiner, the international luxury travel website and magazine ‘Dream Escapes’,  the Swedish Magazine Vagabond and the Canadian Magazine ‘Zoomer’ with a readership of 17 million, to name but a few.  

Not only does this coverage place a spotlight on the Winterval Festival but the visits by media to the festival ensure coverage of Waterford more generally as a tourism destination, encouraging those reading the features to plan a visit to Ireland’s oldest City.

The festival directors and all of the Winterval Festival team want to extend their thanks to the local business community, the festival sponsors, Waterford City and County Council, the people of Waterford and all of the festival’s visitors for their support and their joy in celebrating the festival.