Bike festival numbers best yet

The Rotorua Bike Festival has grown in popularity every year, attracting 5000 people to its events this year. This was the queue at the first event - Bike the Runway. Photo / File

More than 5000 people got on their road bikes, mountain bikes, tandem bikes and tricycles to participate in the Rotorua Bike Festival, the largest number of participants yet.

Festival partner Graeme Simpson said the event, which ran for the third time this year from February 13 to 22, has grown stronger every year.

"There was about 4100 last year, so we are up nearly 25 per cent, which is great, we are really pleased.

"I think it's a growth curve and a lot of the figures are up due to the huge success of the Runway Project," he said.

Mr Simpson said the festival had become an integral part of Rotorua and New Zealand's bike scene.

"I think we are all amazed at just how enthusiastic everyone was, you always hope for that kind of thing, but people seem to be happy and enjoying it more than the first few years."

He thought the success of the festival was down to its broad range of activities.

"It's for everybody, it's diverse, [there are] little kids to grown ups all participating.

"It was one of the things everyone was commenting on, it was really obvious, 'wow' - look at all those kids and families out there.

"We've always talked about it as being owned by our own community and I think people really do have ownership this year.

"The Rotorua Bike Festival, like a lot of the events happening in mountain biking in Rotorua, has grown organically out of the community. There are lots of people involved and lots of people putting in time; it's a real credit to Rotorua and our biking community. This year seems to have reached a high level, every day felt good."

Mr Simpson said there were lots of new ideas for the Rotorua Bike Festival 2016, including having Rotorua Bike Festival TV.

Rotorua Bike Festival trustee and deputy mayor Dave Donaldson said the festival, in combination with the Lakeside Concert on Saturday night, meant the town was humming over the weekend.

"I know that there was no accommodation available and people had difficulty finding accommodation on Saturday night, which was a [result of the] combination of the bike festival, Lakeside and other events.

"I know that for events like the Enduro, we had people here from Australia, Scotland and the UK participating in that, and we received lots of very positive comments from them - great messages from Rotorua were taken away by those competitors, so that provides excellent marketing for us as a mountain bike resort."