It may only be August, but if you’ve already made a start in organising your Christmas party for the year – you aren’t alone.
Recent data from restaurant and venue management platform SquareMeal shows that there was a 40% year-on-year increase in Christmas party bookings in June 2024 for businesses on the platform. Many of these enquiries were also to be found to be from corporate bookers looking to organise their work Christmas party, with many looking for suitable UK venues in which to host the festivities.
The data supports additional recent trends and data that highlight that people are looking to book their Christmas parties now earlier than ever.
Data from Google Trends for searches of ‘Christmas parties’ and ‘Christmas party’ also shows a sharp rise in interest in June, with searches for these terms up 14% compared to 2023. Interest in these terms was also found to routinely peak between Monday and Wednesday before falling off at the weekend, highlighting people wanting to enquire earlier in the week rather than later.
Specific types of Christmas parties have also seen an increase in searches around this time, again with many focused on work and corporate parties with terms such as ‘corporate Christmas party venues’ on the rise.
So what does this all mean for bookings and Christmas parties for the year and beyond? We spoke to Caroline Hendry, Head of Content at SquareMeal, for her thoughts:
“At SquareMeal we are always looking at patterns and trends in user behaviour so we can adjust our content accordingly.
We are delighted to see that the traditional work Christmas party is proving to be secure from the cost-of-living crisis. Despite many businesses cutting costs where they can in 2024, the team-building and camaraderie-boost that companies receive from a fantastic end of year celebration is proving to be more than worth the cost in the eyes of company leaders (and their accountants!).”
