Edinburgh voted best city in UK for Christmas

Published on Thursday 4 November 2010 13:13

EDINBURGH is to mount its biggest ever festive advertising campaign after new research found the capital is rated the best city in the UK to spend Christmas and Hogmanay.

Around 70 per cent of the 2,500 people quizzed around the UK last month said Edinburgh was a better option than London, Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle.

More than a quarter of those quizzed by the market research firm Scene Not Heard said Edinburgh was the best place in the world to spend the festive period, while just 17 per cent said it was "no different to anywhere else".

Now a 170,000 advertising blitz - mainly funded by businesses in Edinburgh - is to be launched in each of those cities, as well as Falkirk, Stirling, Inverness, Livingston. Aberdeen, Perth and Dundee.

It will see posters promoting Edinburgh's Christmas season put up at all of the ticket turnstiles at Glasgow's Queen Street Station, while 60 sites on the London Underground are being booked. More than 150 different poster sites around Scotland will be included as part of the drive to help Edinburgh city centre compete better with major shopping centres. Edinburgh Airport and Lothian Buses are among those backing the advertising campaign.

Graham Birse, deputy chief executive of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, said: "Businesses have largely done their own Christmas marketing before now and this extra funding will pay for advertising campaigns that just have happened before."

Kenneth Wardrop, chief executive of Destination Edinburgh Marketing Alliance, said: "City promotion is particularly competitive, so it's important that Edinburgh has the edge on others. The combination of a really exciting Christmas and Hogmanay programme with UK-wide marketing will mean the city reaches out to more potential visitors than ever before."

Edinburgh and Glasgow both unveiled details of the major events in their festive programmes yesterday, although the full programme for Edinburgh's Hogmanay festivities is being kept under wraps until next week.

Glasgow has shunned major rock and pop acts for Hogmanay in favour of a huge open-air ceilidh in a bid to save money.

Edinburgh's main Christmas events have been scaled back this year in the face of council funding cuts, while the launch event on 25 November has been given a shake-up in a bid to resolve crowd congestion problems which marred last year's festivities.

French street theatre group Transe Express - stars of previous Edinburgh Hogmanay celebrations - is being brought in to stage a show at the top of The Mound, where crowds will be urged to gather rather than in East Princes Street Gardens, where the ice rink will return despite a dispute.

Apart from hosting the annual "Santa run", West Princes Street Gardens has been dropped from the capital's Christmas programme in favour of the smaller St Andrew Square Garden, which will be the focal point for four days of St Andrew's Day festivities.