How Edinburgh’s Christmas became such a stunning success - Donald Anderson
It’s that time of the year again. We’ve all groaned at the Dome putting up its Christmas decorations early, though that’s easier to understand when you realise that the Dome’s decorations are so popular that its bookings shoot up because people want to enjoy what has become an amazing Christmas institution.
Edinburgh’s Christmas is also now an amazing success, but it wasn’t always so. As an event it was born in 1990s Edinburgh when the festive scene was, to be frank, pretty bleak. In those days the Edinburgh area lost 19 per cent of retail spend to Glasgow and the city struggled as a shopping destination against the attractions of Glasgow and out of town shopping.
And that was before the days when Edinburgh became a successful year-round tourism destination. Edinburgh’s Christmas was specifically launched to help encourage shoppers and visitors back into a city centre that struggled to give people reasons to visit. It came from an idea by Lynn Westwood, an economic development officer, who’d seen the Macy’s Parade in New York and asked why we didn’t do that in Edinburgh.
From that the council launched a Christmas festival, which only became successful after the intervention of arts entrepreneur Karen Koren who delivered the city’s first outdoor ice rink and a much better Christmas market. The Big Wheel was added soon after and that has become a successful formula ever since.
Most people do not realise that Christmas is the key driver, along with the summer festivals, in Edinburgh’s success as a year-round tourism destination. Those ‘twin peaks’ of hotel occupancy have given Edinburgh what economic consultancy Savills calculated is the highest hotel occupancy figures in Europe and year-round visitors mean proper year-round jobs.
What people don’t realise though is that cutbacks in funding mean the money made from Edinburgh’s Christmas is now what pays for Edinburgh’s Hogmanay. Hopefully this year will be another year of success for Edinburgh’s special Christmas celebrations and soon we’ll even have Jenners back!