WARM weather greeted a crowd of nearly 14,000 people at the Bendigo racecourse last weekend, who had come from all across Australia for the 2022 Lost Trades Fair.
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Be.Bendigo chief executive Rob Hertbert said the fair was one of a slew of events on March 19-20 that gave the hospitality sector a welcome boost.
"There wasn't an available bed in town," he said.
"It's been wonderful for hotels and accommodation. It was great to see visitors were not just stopping over but were actually staying for the night or longer."
Lost Trades Fair founder and organiser Lisa Rundell said there had been initial caps on ticket sales of just 5000 visitors per day at the site, but those had been lifted shortly before the event to allow tickets sales at the gate.
"We were really thrilled with the number of people we had there," she said.
"We even had people overseas buying our tickets online, although we're not sure if they were purchased as gifts for relatives who live in Australia or if they were travelling themselves to use them."
Previous Lost Trades Fairs attracted crowds upwards of 20,000, but Ms Rundell said she wasn't too worried the event had not equalled its pre-pandemic pulling power.
"We had a very happy, very positive crowd," she said.
"Everybody who was there could find room at each stall to get a good look at what was going on and talk to the artisans. Nobody was squashed at all," she said.
There were about 150 artisans at the event, showing everything from traditional baked goods to antique clockworks.
Ms Rundell said the lower crowd numbers contributed to stronger sales for the exhibitors, as visitors could access the stalls more easily.
"Sometimes if you have a crowd that's three to four people deep at a stall people can't move forward to easily buy things, so I think the turn out was really good and the artisans were very happy," she said.
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