The magic of Christmas sprinkled over the garden centre industry last weekend as The Greatest Christmas Awards for 2013 were presented on Sunday evening at the Majestic Hotel, Harrogate.

From conversations the GTN team had during the evening and at the Harrogate Christmas and Gift Fair, it's clear that where garden centre owners invested in creating a better Christmas Experience, not only did they increase footfall, they also saw big increases in festive product sales and restaurant turnover.

One of the biggest contributors to this is on-line booking as opposed to the traditional queues to see Santa in the grotto. While the lack of queues snaking around a garden centre may lose some “atmosphere”, the benefits can be seen in the tills as happy customers spend more time and more money.

The Greatest Awards team discovered that even if a centre doesn’t build a magical grotto on the scale of ‘World of Grottos’ winners such as Chessington Garden Centre, they can still make the experience very magical.

Merryhatton Garden Centre (pictured above) phoned all of the parents who had booked in advance to find out information about their child to add into Santa’s book. Now that is guaranteed to make the visit magical!

And skating rinks installed under covered planterias meant a better skating experience too, leading to more footfall and more time spent spending, eating and drinking.

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