Applications open for Lincoln Christmas Market stalls

spengelly — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:10:52 +0000

Stalls for this year’s Lincoln Christmas Market are expected to go quickly, as half of all places are already taken on the day that applications open.

Castle Grounds

Businesses wishing to trade at this year’s market are advised to apply early at the dedicated Lincoln Christmas Market website. This comes after 131 businesses opted for a stall at the 2011 event, rather than a refund when severe weather forced the cancellation of the 2010 Christmas Market.

Click here to complete an online application form

Applications for places opened on Tuesday 17^th May, with organisers at the City of Lincoln Council looking for quality products and an emphasis on products and produce from Lincolnshire. Fantastic discounts are available to attract high quality, original, charity and local traders to the event. These can be cumulative, so a craft trader from Lincoln could receive as much as a 30 per cent discount:

50%	Charity discount	To promote good causes and instil a true ‘Christmas Spirit’.Charitable and non-profitable agencies such as Rotary and RoundTable may apply for charitable discounts.
25%	Non UK stallholders	This discount is for authentic continental traders, particularly from Germany. Traders must be travelling from outside the UK to be considered for this rate.
15%	Craft discount	To support hand made goods and crafts.
15%	Local traders –within Lincoln cityboundary	For businesses based within Lincoln city boundary.
10%	Local traders –within Lincolnshire	For businesses based elsewhere in Lincolnshire.

Last year, the Lincoln Christmas Market team received 469 applications for the 275 stall places.

Mark Hollingworth, Chair of the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce, said: ”It’s great to see that incentives are being offered to local traders. The Lincoln Christmas Market is important to the whole area, and this means the county as well as the city. Having local businesses filling the stalls gives a sense of place and showcases the city as a destination, which is what we’re trying to do through Visit Lincoln.”

Stallholder

Rob Bradley, Tourism Services Manager at the City of Lincoln Council, said: ”We’re usually faced with more applications than stall places, which puts us in the very strong position of being able to carefully select the stalls we want to see at the market. We’re pushing more and more for high quality, hand made and local products. This year, we already have 131 stalls secured, so we’re much further ahead in the process than we would usually be. This gives us more opportunity to choose stalls that will create the best possible visitor experience of the market.

”We’d like to make the Christmas Market even more focussed on Lincolnshire products, so there are great discounts for local businesses. Applications will be open for around a month and we’re looking forward to hearing from local businesses with great products.”

Businesses that secure a stall at the Lincoln Christmas Market will be informed in June. For more information, visit the website or contact the Lincoln Christmas Market team on 01522 873503.

Welcome to the Lincoln Christmas Market Website!

data — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:46:43 +0000

The Lincoln Christmas Market Team are proud to confirm that plans are underway for the 2011 event. The dates for 2011 are Thursday 1st December to Sunday 4th.

Christmas Market 2011 Survey

data — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:16:58 +0000

PLEASE NOTE: This survey has now closed. We will be publishing the results soon.

As most people know, the Christmas Market 2010 was cancelled due to the severe weather that hit the country and the county in November and December. This was a tough decision as the market means so much for the city and in light of the cancellation, organisers at the City of Lincoln Council are looking at future markets so see if they might be changed to prevent a similar incident having such a large impact.

We want to improve the quality of the Lincoln Christmas market and not necessarily be the biggest, but be the best. One option is to have a market for a longer period but perhaps on a slightly smaller scale. This might mean that some of the market could still go ahead even if there was severe weather for a few days. It might also have less of an impact on the local area by spreading the visitor numbers over a longer period, and create less disruption for residents with fewer road closures.

Before any decisions about the market are made, the council is asking for opinions from local people, stallholders, coach companies and visitors. This is your chance to influence the future of the Lincoln Christmas Market.