A fabulous Festive Season
The festive season is the most important time in your gifting calendar. In December alone venues can expect to match (or exceed) sales made during the first 6 months of the year! We’ve created this resource for you filled with insights & inspirational ‘gifts’ to help plan your Festive campaign. Everything you need to wrap up Christmas and have a fabulous festive season is here.
Countdown to
Christmas Day 2025
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Spreading Festive cheer!
This is nearly as much as the total sales of Birthday gifts (37%). However, 97% of Christmas gifts are sold over 2 months only.
Venues generate (on average) half of their annual gifting revenue in November and December.
In December, some of our clients sell over half a million £ of gifts. How much could you sell this year?
Best selling Christmas gifts
Monetary gift vouchers – where the recipient is free to choose their own experience, are the most popular gifts for Christmas, followed by Spa Day experiences, Afternoon Tea for Two and One Night Stay vouchers.
Monetary gifts are the most popular Christmas gift for all venues. £100 is the most popular voucher but we recommend having selection of different values from £25 to £1,000 to appeal to all shoppers.
Spa experiences are the 2nd most popular gift type. Spa Days packages often inclulde a treatment and access to the spa facilties for a few hours. Create a selection of packages with different price points.
Overnight Stay experiences are the 3rd most popular Christmas gift voucher type. They include vouchers with a one night stay with breakfast, as well as packages including a dinner or activities such as spa treatments.
Afternoon Tea experiences are generating a similar amount of revenue as overnight stay experiences. We recommend selling both a voucher with afternoon tea only and a version with a drink included, such as champagne.
Top tip: Create gifts with a special festive name
We’ve noticed that gifts with a Christmas twist in the name tend to perform well, helping guide people in choosing a Christmas gift. We recommend having one or two Christmas ‘highlight’ gifts – this will be useful for your gift campaigns too.
Your gift shop ready to inspire
First impressions matter and your gift shop deserves special attention to compete and inspire visitors throughout the busiest time of the year. It’s your ‘shop window’, where you can draw people in and engage them with your images & copy, whilst showcasing the gift experiences that would make wonderful festive gifts.
- Add Christmas images and copy to the carousel
- Regroup your best selling Christmas gifts under one menu filter
- Create special gifts
- Ensure your prices are updated to the rates you’d like to receive next year.
You’re able to do these yourself in the Gift App, provided you have site editor permissions (if you don’t have these, but would like them, just let us know) – this lets you turn your ideas into reality and see your edits in real time. Alternatively, please click onto the buttons below.
Set it up now, you can schedule the activation date to a later date.
Stand out from the crowd
Capturing the attention of an audience is one of the toughest jobs in marketing (the average person is now estimated to encounter between 6,000 to 10,000 ads every single day!), so wowing customers with your Festive campaign is crucial.
Christmas is about family
Unsurprisingly, nearly 90% of the Christmas gifts purchased are for close family members (partners, parents, siblings or children).
What gift will they be getting?
- PARENTS are likely to receive an afternoon tea experience or monetary voucher
- PARTNERS are the recipients that receive the most spa gifts
- CHILDREN are likely to be given the freedom to choose their own experience, with monetary gifts being a popular choice
- SIBLINGS are also likely to receive monetary gifts or afternoon tea experiences
Time for gifts
Leading up to Christmas, each Monday we see a jump in sales, with Saturdays being the least busy day of the week.
The peak of sales happens between 10:00 and 12:00.
Plan your emails accordingly to help optimise sales!
December daily sales:
December hourly sales:
Last-minute gift idea?
E-vouchers!
Up until a week before Christmas, the majority of sales are sent via post, but for last-minute gifts, email delivery is an ideal alternative.
Remind your customers they can still place their orders until the very last-minute, from the comfort of their sofa!
Top tip: Last-minute men…
In December, you will have more men than usual visiting your gift shop, who tend to spend more than women. We also noticed that the closer to Christmas Day, the higher the proportion of men buying gifts.
In the week before Christmas ‘promote’ any gift vouchers you’d like to appear at the top of your gift voucher listing page, such as higher value gifts.
Who is placing the biggest orders?
Corporates! Many companies are looking for unique and memorable ways to inspire, recognise and reward people for their hard work and loyalty; to show other businesses that they truly value their relationship.
Reach out to companies, sharing a dedicated gifting page containing a selection of your gifts they will love, and a form to allow them to pay by BACs and personalise each voucher easily. Get in touch to get it setup.
Are your teams ready for the Christmas rush?
As December is the busiest month of the year, expect customer questions and direct order requests to increase. Make sure your call centre and front of house teams (restaurants, front office, spa…) are clear on how to sell gifts.
How to process an order on behalf of a guest
How to print a voucher in house
How to send an e-voucher
Log onto the Gift App and click onto ‘How To Guides’ to view all videos.
Stationery stock levels
To make sure we do not run out of your branded paper, wallets or envelopes, please send us more stock before the festive rush.
Here is the delivery address:
JEM Marketing & Fulfilment Services
C/o SK Chase
FAO: Alexander Mabbott
JEM House
Little Mead Industrial Estate
Alfold Road
Cranleigh
Surrey
GU6 8ND
IMPORTANT: Each time you send some stock, please include a delivery note confirming your name, your venue name, your contact details and the quantity sent.
Please also confirm what website the stationery is for if you have multiple shops.
Successful Christmas campaign check list
Attracting visitors to your gift shop is key and is of course, vital to generating sales. Here are our top tips to do so.
Feature ‘gifts’ in prominent places on your own website
Have a ‘buy as a gift’ call to action & as a pop up window
Frequent emails, social media posts & ads
Add a gift section in all emails, including transactional emails
Get all our tips on our Christmas checklist.…
Training Guides
All you need to know about the Gift App from creating a new gift to uploading new images or processing a complimentary order.
Log onto the Gift App and click onto the ‘How To Guides’ button.
Help!
If you need help, please contact us:
enquiries@skchase.com