When the 15th Brussels les Bains ended at 10pm on Sunday, it was to a very positive result. It opened on the 1st of July. There was a similar number of visitors to last year, the Brussels Tourism councillor Philippe Close said on Sunday afternoon.
The number of visitors last year reached 350,000. This year’s number will be known within the next two weeks. It has been estimated using SIM cards, with the help of telephone operators. This also helps work out the audience’s age ranges and place of residence. The person’s identity is not revealed. “Traders estimate there were similar numbers to last year”, said Philippe Close. “We didn’t have great weather, but it wasn’t awful either. 2016 was, of course, difficult for large-scale public events. Brussels les Bains worked because of the diversity of the activities, including the sports offered, culture, cinema showings….” The ‘God Save the 90s’ evening’ on Friday was sold out, with 3,000 people attending.
Organisers said digital communication surrounding the event was efficient and more widespread this year. The new application that lets people access practical information was downloaded by several hundred users. Around 20,000 people liked the Facebook page, and there were around 130 posts on it. A tracker site said it was looked at more than 18,000 times a day. Hundreds of new followers also followed the event on Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. The internet site recorded more than 73,000 consultations and 55,000 users since the start of this year’s event.
“The real challenge for the organisers now is to think about how Brussels les Bains will change. When we started 15 years ago, there was nothing in this area: today there is an economic dynamic and housing being constructed”, announced Philippe Close. “This is the challenge for the next 3 or 4 years”.
(Source: Belga)
