Tamworth Country Music Festival 2022 to help business and economic recovery after COVID-19 with bookings and tourism increasing

Most of Tamworth's accommodation stakeholders have reported they are upwards of 90 per cent fully booked for the January country music dates.

Tamworth Regional Council (TRC) coordinator of economic and destination development, Kate Baker, told the Leader the average number of visitors to the festival per day is about 50,000.

"Certainly the enquiry that we're getting indicates that number will be met and probably exceeded," she said.

Ms Baker said people popping into the visitor information centre has really "ramped up" as recently as the past week and festival enquiries have too.

"So on previous months we're probably about 50 per cent up on visitation so we expect that to continue to increase," she said.

Traffic checking out the new website has also gone up significantly in the past week.

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"What we're seeing at the moment is a massive increase in visitation from Sydney and people are using Tamworth as a hub very much staying three or four days and travelling," she said.

"We expect that will be the same during the festival and the beautiful thing about these travellers is they are actually really cashed up so they're spending money in the region and that's what we need."

TRC growth and prosperity director Jacqueline O'Neill said the positive early signs show the country music capital is on the path to recovery after the pandemic.

The annual Tamworth Country Music Festival generally pumps about $75 million into the city's economy.

"Our job is to enable and facilitate and that's what we do here at council, we want our economy to be healthy and to be robust ... we want to see our businesses flourish," she said.

TRC held a forum on Wednesday night with about 70 stakeholders.

"Everyone is super pumped and super positive with regard to the festival," she said.

Despite some difficulties with filling jobs across a range of industries, with some calling for country music casuals, Ms O'Neill said businesses were meeting the challenges and felt confident about the festival.

"We're very agile, we're resilient," she said.

TRC will launch the Festival Friendly Program from Monday to encourage businesses that may not see the country music crowd as their typical customers to offer deals to boost spending.

Businesses can sign up for free and there is a marketing package to win and shopper prizes to dish out.

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