Christmas is a special and exciting time in the City of Melbourne, and in 2011 the city’s streets and landmarks will be transformed with a brand new Christmas decorations program including a Christmas forest made of living native trees at City Square, as well as over 80 events and attractions throughout 30 days of the 2011 Christmas Festival experience.
Businesses take advantage of the Christmas experience
As a business there are many ways that you can create a point of difference and take advantage of the Christmas experience. Here’s some ideas:
- Offer a special promotion in the lead up to Christmas
- Decorate your store or venue
- Offer a free gift wrapping service or by gold coin donation to your favourite charity
- Dress in festive attire
- Organise a special event for your customers
- Look at extending your opening hours to take advantage of increased pedestrian traffic in December. December and March have the highest numbers of pedestrians coming into the city.
- If your business is located near one of the city’s Christmas decorations, look at theming your store or product offer to leverage the Christmas experience into your business
Tools to get you started
With 15 new decorations, across 20 locations in the City of Melbourne municipality why not tell your customers about all the locations. Simply download a copy of the decorations map and you can point out the best spots for them (available on 28 November).
From 28 November, visitors to the city will also be able to download or pick up their very own Christmas map. This will help them explore the decoration trail through Melbourne’s main thoroughfares and laneways while doing some shopping or dining along the way.
Christmas decorations map (PDF, 2.3MB) 
Christmas decorations map (text only, 45kb)
You can also request copies of the maps for your business, please contact the Strategic Marketing team.
For further information about marketing opportunities throughout the year, please sign up to the Enterprise Melbourne eNewsletter.
Christmas decorations competition for businesses
The Collins Street Precinct with support from the City of Melbourne, are running a Christmas decorations competition open to businesses within the Collins Street precinct and surrounding areas.
There's fabulous prizes to win, and the opportunity to receive cross promotion for your business. Christmas shoppers will be encouraged to take a self-guided tour of the displays, and by voting for their favourite Christmas display online. A group of official judgings will also take place to view the best displays, with winners notified prior to Christmas.
Register your interest by 25 November by visiting the Collins Street Precinct website for further information.