Christmas
As most retailers know, Christmas is the biggest annual event in the sales calendar, and to enable us to support our businesses during this busy time, we join together with the different organisations within the town, as well as our Ward Councillors, to bring one joint, collaborative effort.
Otley BID is a significant funder (circa 50%) of Otley’s Tourism Marketing Strategy. In collaboration with Otley Town Council, Otley Town Partnership and Otley Chamber of Trade, these 4 organisations make up the Town Co-ordination & Tourism Committee, who’s main aim is to raise Otley’s profile as a place to live, work and visit throughout the year – and Christmas is no exception!
This collaboration has enabled us to support businesses with a whole host of different initiatives to help us attract more people into the town during this time, such as:
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- Lighting Up Otley – Part-funding of new Christmas lights throughout the town in 2019
- Market Place – Part-funding of the annual Christmas Tree in Market Place
- All Year Round Lighting – In 2019 we teamed up with Otley Town Council to part-fund and provide the following changes / additions to the Christmas lights in and around Otley:
- Reinstate the string of lights which used to run down Tittybottle Park
- All year round decorative lighting to the outside of the Buttercross. This will potentially be on a timer 8pm to midnight so as not to cause too much light pollution
- All year round lighting of the ex-HSBC triangle within the trees, again on a timer so as not to cause too much light pollution.
- Business Christmas Trees – Heavily subsidised provision of circa 235 illuminated Christmas Trees above businesses. In 2020 Otley BID took over the full administration, supply, installation and removal trees from Otley Chamber of Trade.
- Bay Horse Court – Part-funded Christmas/all year round lighting in Bay Horse Court in 2020.
- Festive Shopping Guide – Part-funded 35,000 copies of the official 2018 Visit Otley Festive Season Guide were printed and delivered by post to Otley residents and the surrounding areas. The booklet included the best of Otley’s festive events, a local shopping guide, dining out & nightlife ideas and 5 whole pages of great seasonal discounts & prizes which many businesses very kindly offered.
- Free Parking – The Annual Free Christmas Parking initiative, organised and funded in collaboration with Otley Town Council and our Ward Councillors
- Annual Christmas Video – Part-funding of the Annual Christmas Video which began in 2018. The production and promotion of the video is in collaboration with Visit Otley and the Town Coordination The four videos have averaged around 20,000 views on social media and coverage has been gained on regional TV such as Calendar, Leeds TV and Look North, as well as extensive articles in regional press including the Yorkshire Post and T&A.
- Empty Shop Artwork – In a mission to help make our empty shops look more festive in the run up to the busy shopping season, in 2018 we commissioned talented artist, Jenny Tribillon to create beautiful Winter scenes in windows of the former Tui and Taylor’s Shoe Shop. The frontages were spruced up in time for the thousands of visitors who descended for the Otley Victorian Christmas Fayre, and were subsequently updated with a Spring/Summer theme in 2019. These projects are fully funded by Otley BID.