If the demand for hotel rooms in the local area is any guide to a sporting event’s popularity, the news that plans for a “fan village” near Cheltenham racecourse during the Festival this week have been ditched should, on the face of it, give the meeting’s organisers some cause for concern.
A local entrepreneur planned to use shipping containers, parked within walking distance of the course, as somewhere for racegoers to rest their heads after a hard day at the track (and, for a fair proportion at least, a harder night on the town). But only 16 of the 300 beds had been booked by the middle of last week. For now at least, the scheme has been scrapped.
