Christmas Market for Rotuaari?
An Oulu businessman has announced that he wants to set up a special Christmas Market on the city’s High Street.
Mikko Keisu believes that the venture will attract many stallholders and could become an important yearly tourist attraction.
Keisu told YLE that Rotuaari is the perfect place for such a market, explaining that ‘the frost protection system means it’s like summer in the middle of winter, bicycles can’t be used in the area and the road is more deserted than the Sahara!’
Critics have claimed that Keisu’s Christmas Market won’t work, arguing that similar things have been tried before and have crashed burned because retailers, when given the opportunity, will use the Market Hall instead.
However, insists that the Market Hall is not the right place. ‘I’ve been to dozens of Christmas markets in Central Europe,’ he says. ‘And they are not on the outskirts of the city. They are in the middle of the city.’
Keisu compares Oulu with Ulm in Southern Germany, both being a very similar size. It has a thriving Christmas Market.
‘It’s so great to go there. There are hundreds of stalls. It’s one of the most beautiful places in Ulm,’ he adds.
If Keisu’s plan is successful, it will not be the first outdoor Christmas Market in Finland. There is already one in the centre of Tampere which boasts about 50 different stalls.
Somehow, I’m with the critics on this.
Whereas it’s a ‘nice’ idea…it’s not going to be a ‘tourist trap’ – who wants to come to Oulu for shopping?
If it’s “more deserted than the sahara”, who is gonna visit it (It’s definitely not. Near Christmas time, it’s heaving – plus you CAN take a bike there)
As far as Market Hall (Kauppahalli) being on the outskirts of the city, it most certainly aint! 2 minute walk from Rotuaari.
No.
I also think this’ll crash and burn.
It sounds like a good idea to me, but it will succeed or fail not on how many tourists it attracts, but on how locals react to it. And the actual stall holders themselves, of course. Shoppers can flit through a market like this in less than an hour, but the stall holders have to park themselves at the stall all day; considering the severity of the typical Oulu winter, is it any wonder that they prefer the cosy interior of the Market Hall.
There’s more than the Tampere Market held outdoors, the St. Thomas Market in Helsinki is also an outdoors one. This year it has been moved from Esplanade Park to Senate Square, and the move coupled with pretty miserable weather (I’m from Ireland and I’ve felt right at home since November, it has been that rainy and windy!!) seems to have hit the market attendance fairly hard – as far as I can tell. I pass it about 4 times a day, and it hasn’t looked busy once.
By the way, I wrote a piece about Christmas Markets in Finland ( http://www.discoveringfinland.com/blog/?p=171 ), if there’s an existing market in Oulu that should have been included, let me know!