WHILE it only drew a small crowd, a community feedback session stacked up the big numbers at the 2018 Tamworth Country Music Festival on Tuesday night.

About 12 community members joined councillors and council staff on breaking down the results of January’s event.

It was a big one, according to acting mayor Helen Tickle with 2800 acts and the growth had spread to the wider areas of the district with many vendors reporting good sales figures.

However, festival manager Barry Harley admitted it was a hot one, too, which saw some festival goers retreat into the city’s air conditioned venues.

“FanZone numbers were slightly down and we put that down to the heat, We noticed a definite reduction in people in Peel Street from the lunch time period, but if you ask yourself why, it was 40 degrees,” he said.

Mr Harley said there was an indication from new technology that the festival was getting bigger. A one-off trial across The Longyard Hotel, Toyota Park and Peel Street saw 55,000 unique mobile phone signals picked up in a five minute period.

He said council were looking into mini census surveys with venues to determine how many patrons are inside at any given time.

The bus services picked up 60,000 patrons over the 10 days and about 31,000 people had walked through the city’s tourist information centre.

Meanwhile, about 7000 fans were reported in Toyota Park on any given night.

Mr Harley said camping numbers had increased from previous years and most of the city’s hotels and motels had managed to maintain a no-occupancy rate. He said council would also start the conversation with the city’s caravan parks on ways to “start filling them up a little earlier.”

One community member asked why there was a downturn in stallholders on Peel Street for the 2018 event compared to previous years.

Mr Harley admitted it was a challenge juggling the visiting stallholders and managing their competition with “52-week rate payers” On a whole, he conceded it was not about making the festival bigger, but better.