It had always been the great British festival way: greasy burgers and warm beer, retch-inducing toilets and the descent into dishevelment as roughing it takes its toll.
But a generation of festivalgoers has emerged who are willing to splash the cash to inject luxury into the experience. This summer, there are signs the under-pressure industry is ramping up its offer, from gleaming private toilets and “pamper parlours” to fine dining, hot tubs, saunas and even a “cold waterfall drench” to keep refreshed.
“Millennials, and Gen Z in particular, are wanting to spend their money on experiences over possessions,” says Digby Vollrath, the chief executive of the event catering company Togather. “Festivals are the ultimate expression of that, it is what they are saving their money for.”
Togather opened a 65-seater marquee restaurant in conjunction with the chef Yotam Ottolenghi at the Love Supreme jazz festival at Glynde Place estate in East Sussex earlier in July.
The £65 three-course menu, washed down with options including an £80 rosé, ran for 13 sittings and sold out across the three-day event, with 845 diners.
At Wilderness in Oxfordshire, which has long had an upmarket reputation that has seen it nicknamed in some quarters the “Waitrose of festivals”, festivalgoers can book a Fortnum & Mason picnic “overlooking the cricket pitch”.
At £97.50 a head, the meal includes “duck liver parfait with orange jelly” and “chilli and dill prawns with compressed cucumber”.
While upmarket dining is becoming increasingly popular on the festival circuit, catering to life’s creature comforts is also becoming big business.
For those who sign up with When Nature Calls, which operates upmarket facilities at festivals including Latitude and Rewind for those willing to pay about £80, customers can skip the queues and pungent chemical odours of toilets used by the masses.
In these “loo lounges”, which may feature a resident DJ, paying customers can feel right at home with porcelain toilets “cleaned after every use”, fresh water flushing, Molton Brown hand soap and warm running water.
Within its giant tents, rows of mirrors are laid out, with curling wands and hairdryers, so “you can stay glamorous day and night … feeling fresh and selfie-ready”.
For those willing to fork out £460, a hot tub for six can be booked lakeside at Wilderness to “soothe away symptoms of the previous night’s frivolity”.
With boutique options including paying more than £5,000 for the “Summerhouse en suite for two” – on top of a £288 per person weekend ticket – its Wandering Wild Spa encourages guests to actually ditch the music they have paid to see and “be transported from the whirlwind of festival life into luxurious tranquillity”.
“It is a mega trend,” says Vollrath. “People are treating festivals more like holidays or much more of a major experience than they did in the past.”
Vollrath says that the trend is being led by Gen Z, those typically born between 1997 and 2012, who are putting increasing importance on enjoying real-life experiences in an age dominated by social media – and subsequently displaying those experiences online.
Almost 60% of UK Gen Z plan to attend a music festival in the next year, compared with 41% of UK adults overall, according to Mintel. The second biggest festival-going demographic is millennials, those born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s, with 48% planning to attend one in the next 12 months.
A report published in June by the Resolution Foundation found that real weekly pay at age 24 for those born in the late 1990s was 12% higher than for cohorts born in the late 1980s.
And at 24, those born in the early 2000s are also earning more than any other generation going back to those born in the 1950s, according to the study.
The phenomenon of some in Gen Z being flush for cash and eager to spend it, against a wider backdrop that has seen most households adopt a belt-tightening approach amid the cost of living crisis, is a timely boon for the festival industry.
Last year, the number of “music tourists” – fans travelling considerable distances in the UK and those from overseas – hit a record 24.7m providing an £11.2bn spending boost across the UK economy.
However, while the figures include the UK’s biggest festivals, such as Glastonbury, Reading and Download, the main drivers were the super stadium gigs by global acts such as Oasis, Coldplay and Beyoncé.
While dedicated festival audiences are forecast to grow from 6.5 million in 2023 to more than 8 million in 2027, many smaller independent festivals are struggling to survive as staging and artist costs have climbed significantly in recent years.
According to the Association of Independent Festivals, a total of 43 UK festivals were cancelled, postponed or shuttered entirely in 2025, following a record 78 festivals that did not proceed in 2024.
In June, Scotland’s first-ever edition of the internationally renowned Womad festival was cancelled, while this week a series of Heritage Live concerts this summer at venues including Sandringham Castle – featuring acts including Lionel Richie, Christina Aguilera, Eric Clapton and Ricky Martin – were cancelled due to “far lower than average ticket sales” and “general financial uncertainty”.
Tapping into the trend for upmarket add-on experiences at festivals is quickly becoming a lucrative imperative, providing high profit margins to significantly bolster income from traditional sources such as tickets sales and lower-priced food options.
However, for festivalgoers who flinch at people paying over the odds for luxury, there is more than a touch of schadenfreude when big ticket blowouts go horribly wrong (see: Fyre festival).
Last year, Glastonbury glampers who had paid between £10,000 and £16,500 for luxury yurts – part of a package that included alfresco dining, hot tubs, a cocktail bar, warm private showers and an on-site chauffeur for transport to and from the stages – were left out of pocket when provider Yurtel went bust.
Nevertheless, even the Shambala festival, founded 26 years ago with a decidedly un-VIP ethos at its core, has decided to dip its toe in the upmarket experience waters for the first time this year.
“Luxury and VIP doesn’t fit with our ethos, we are slightly allergic to the idea of VIP so it is a completely new thing for us,” says Christopher Johnson, co-founder of the Northamptonshire festival. “What we are calling it is sustainable luxury.”
Shambala, which in April became the UK’s first worker-owned festival when its founders stepped back and created an employee ownership trust, is launching Dragonfly Camping this summer.
The sustainability twist is that for a £49 upgrade festivalgoers can access to luxury compost toilets, a pamper parlour powered by renewable energy and a wood-fired hot tub and sauna, and a “cold waterfall drench”.
“More people are looking for a bit of extra comfort,” says Johnson. “It has been an interesting journey for us as to how to present luxury. We wanted to do it differently, sustainable and making sure it is affordable. These trends are real and we wanted to show that these experiences don’t always have to be expensive and exclusive.”
