Saturday, November 8, 2014

Canberra's Floriade attracts more visitors than ever

  Floriade close up

Attendance figures for this year's Floriade Spring Festival in Canberra were the highest in the event's 27-year history.

A total of 481,854 visits were recorded at the Commonwealth Park, up from last year's figure of 448,987.

The influx of local, national and international visitors are a welcome economic boost for the national capital.

ACT Tourism Minister Andrew Barr said the crowd numbers are the result of a strong events program around the theme of Passion.

"Amongst the record number of attendees over the month will be people who have come multiple times and that's really encouraging," he said. 

"Obviously, every time they attend they are contributing to economic activity in the Territory, particularly interstate and international visitors." 

"We can be confident that the economic contribution will be in the ballpark of last year's, if not more, so we are approaching $40 million into the Territory economy. So that's a good result."