City News

Mike Whitby, Leader of Birmingham City Council, used the visit of the UK Ambassador to Germany, Sir Michael Arthur, as an opportunity to announce that Birmingham’s 2008 Frankfurt Christmas Market boosted the city’s economy by an estimated £67million.

With visitor numbers up to a record breaking 2.8million, and trade up 27 per cent on 2007, figures released today by Vector Research and Marketing Birmingham show the UK’s biggest German market helped the city’s traders defy the recession in 2008.

In its eighth year, the Frankfurt Christmas Market is now a major highlight in the city’s calendar and the economic impact has steadily increased. By comparison the event was worth an estimated £47.69million in 2006 and £56million 12 months later.

Cllr Whitby, said: “Birmingham has the largest Christmas market in the UK and as these impressive figures show, the Frankfurt Christmas Market provides a massive boost to the city’s economy, as well as being an incredibly popular social event.

“We had almost three million visitors to the market last year, many of whom travelled from outside the city. Visitors come here and spend money in our shops, restaurants and hotels, adding to the overall economy of the city centre at a critical time of year for retailers and business.

“Building on the good news from Vector, research undertaken by Birmingham City Council Officers indicates that if you aggregate the visitor numbers from both the German and English ‘German’ Christmas Markets, Birmingham’s would come out as the fifth biggest overall, just behind Munich!

“The success of our Frankfurt Christmas Market truly is remarkable, and goes from strength-to-strength as we continue to support the city’s retail sector.”

Sir Michael Arthur said: “That the Frankfurt Christmas Market has become such an important social event and economic factor is a prime example for the strength of today’s relationship between the UK and Germany. This is particularly true for the business world. Literally hundreds of thousands of jobs in each country are sustained by investment from the other. And it is in tough times like these that sound partnerships like the British and German business partnership come into their own.”

The Frankfurt Christmas Market and accompanying home-grown craft fair attracts shoppers to Birmingham from across the UK and 94 per cent of visitors rated the experience positively.

Planning is already underway for a bigger and better 2009 event and Cllr Ray Hassall, Cabinet Member for Leisure, Sport & Culture, said: “The Frankfurt Christmas Market grows in popularity every year and that’s testament to the hard work of everyone involved.

“A lot of planning goes into such a major event and the team can be proud of the fact that the Christmas market gets bigger and better year on year.”