Ballarat will look to continue to rake in tourist dollars this weekend with the Ballarat Beer Festival the next major event in a string of attractions across summer.
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The festival attracted about 5000 punters in 2016 and drew $855,000 of investment into the city.
Organisers are hoping the pristine 24-degree-outlook will encourage similar numbers to Saturday’s event at City Oval.
Festival director Ric Dexter said planning for the event began back in October to ensure everything ran smoothly on the day.
“You’ve got the furniture you’ve gotta bring in, we’ve made sure we’ve brought in extra shade than previous years and then you've gotta bring in 16 diesel generators to power the cool rooms for the kegs as there's no power on the ground,” Mr Dexter said.
“It just comes down to planning. “We've got a great template to work with thanks to the previous guys so we've just tried to improve year on year.”
The festival comes after a successful first half of summer for Ballarat tourism, with the Cycling Road Nationals again taking over Sturt Street and Mount Buninyong before being followed by the hugely successful Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds concert in North Gardens on Sunday night.
Ballarat will play host to two more major draw cards in the coming fortnight, with the John Farnham-led Red Hot Summer Tour to take over the North Gardens next Saturday before The Cat Empire and Xavier Rudd continue the party at the same venue the following night.
Ballarat Regional Tourism chief executive Noel Dempsey said he hoped the continuing success of the beer festival would help the city market its beer culture all year round.
“The festival has been going a number of years in a highly competitive market but it’s been really successful,” Mr Dempsey said.
“It’s part of our long term strategy to establish craft beer excellence, and (the festival) is just one element of it.”
Mr Dempsey said great weather had provided a boost to the many events throughout the city so far this summer.
“Nick Cave’s crowd was certainly above 6000 and on the basis of the time a large percentage would have stayed overnight,” Mr Dempsey said. “While we don’t have official figures yet it was definitely a huge crowd for a regional event.”
