Hull’s summer of festivals provided a boost for business by attracting thousands of people into the city centre.

Fashion Week, the Yum! Festival of Food and Drink and the Hull Trinity Festival – all organised by Hull BID – showed big increases in the footfall figures for key areas of the city centre.

In addition Hull BID supported a wide range of other events and festivals including Humber Street Sesh, Hull Civic Society’s Heritage Open Days and the University of Hull’s graduation ceremonies.

Footfall during Hull BID Fashion Week at the beginning of May was more than 100,000 higher than during the previous week, with an increase of more than 22,000 on the Saturday – the day of the finale.

The Yum! Festival of Food and Drink showed footfall increase year on year, and the move to Queen Victoria Square proved a big success. Numbers for King Edward Street were up to 63,520 compared with 45,456 for the previous week and 38,329 up on the 2011 event.

Hull Trinity Festival brought live music to 16 bars in the Old Town the weekend after the Yum! Festival, its dedicated website attracting 6,600 unique visits in the month of July alone and generated more business for licensees – and for Holy Trinity Church.

Lee Kirman of Oscars said: “Our business was up by about 30 per cent over the weekend and it was great to see the Old Town buzzing. Holy Trinity Church had record visitor figures for the Saturday when we had the final of the busking competition in the churchyard.”

Kathryn Shillito, Hull BID City Centre Manager, said: “Humber Street Sesh drew in 15,000 visitors, the Graduation Celebrations attracted an additional 8,000 visitors into the city centre and Heritage Open Days brought in another 10,000. It all adds up to increased opportunities for city centre businesses.”

DOMINIC HOOK: local artist performs at Hull Trinity Festival Photograph: Chris Oaten (www.otenphotography.co.uk)