ROMP Festival 2024 saw almost 25,000 people attend Yellow Creek Park throughout the four-day music festival and reached a new hotel occupancy high of 83%. Organizers are looking back on the weekend and are ready for the 22nd year, with new dates announced.
The Executive Director of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum and ROMP Chris Joslin said that ROMP is always a highlight event for the Museum, but this event did more than highlight the Museum.
“ROMP Festival is the one event that binds everything together for us and celebrates the cultural heritage of Kentucky’s music. The impact of bluegrass music on such diverse ROMP artists as Country Gongbang from South Korea, Crying Uncle Bluegrass Band from the San Francisco Bay area, Marty Stuart, Molly Tuttle, Jerry Douglas, and Dierks Bentley underscores the powerful influence of this genre today,” Joslin said.
The attendees came from 42 states and 10 countries, including France, Germany, Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, Afghanistan, South Korea, Ireland, Canada, and the United States.
The festival is the primary fundraiser for the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
Hotel occupancy for the weekend reached 83%, up from 77% in 2023. Destination Manager Dave Kirk said this is due to many factors with ROMP this year, but it still generated a lot of new visitors.
“When you get to those higher numbers, it gets harder to get higher, but ROMP killed it this year, bringing in new people,” he said.
Kirk also noted that a baseball tournament was held the same weekend, which also contributed to some of the room occupancy.
ROMP said they expect to kick off 2025’s festival with another four-day weekend on June 25-28 back at Yellow Creek Park.
