Christmas lights, camera, action! The countdown is on, and soon our feeds will be filled with photos of friends attending Christmas markets up and down the UK. It’s an annual tradition which transforms towns and cities into festive wonderlands stuffed with mouth-watering food, drinks, and stalls laden with great gift ideas. But not all Christmas markets are made equal.

To help you make the right decision, Envirofone has scoured social media and crunched the numbers. Using data from social listening, Instagram hashtags, TikTok views and total mentions, we can see where the UK’s Christmas markets rank from the most to least enjoyable. So, get your hot chocolate and gloves at the ready.

Don’t forget; if you’re keen to keep up with all the latest videos and posts about this year’s  Christmas markets on social media or take your high-quality snaps, Envirofone has a great choice of refurbished mobile phones. Give someone special the gift of a gadget this festive season, or put one on your wish list, and you could be unwrapping your new mobile on Christmas morning.
 

Instagram hashtags

Before you make any travel plans, let’s see how our Christmas markets stack up on Instagram. Hashtags allow us to track which markets get people talking and sharing. The higher the number of hashtags, the more popular a location or event tends to be. So, which market is at the top of the nice list?

With 65,780 hashtags, Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland is our festive front-runner. The London attraction boasts nine rollercoasters and a huge selection of entertainment and activities. There is ice skating, circus shows, live music, stalls and more—plenty for all the family to fill a whole day.

Manchester comes a close second with 62,426 hashtags, making it a firm favourite in the North. But, with only 2,248 hashtags, Newcastle’s Christmas market has the fewest of all the UK cities. Sadly, the event has scaled back since COVID-19, but it still promises a vibrant day out with a range of local traders, tantalising Caribbean, Chinese and Greek food, and staples like roasted chestnuts and mulled wine.

TikTok views

In the ever-changing world of social media, TikTok videos act as digital word-of-mouth. The more views a video gets, the more people have seen it and are likely to visit, try, or buy.

When it comes to Christmas markets, Edinburgh takes the number one spot with a whopping 12,516,400 views. As part of the Edinburgh Winter Festival, the market is surrounded by concerts, theatre performances, a light show, craft classes, a Christmas tree maze and much more. Set among the Scottish capital’s historic architecture, it’s no wonder Edinburgh Christmas market is a popular destination.

Winter Wonderland ranks second with 10,596,079 views, putting it and Edinburgh more than 5.5 million views ahead of the nearest market, Manchester. Again, with only 3,780, Newcastle is at the bottom of the table. Larger markets may benefit from more organic searches, which increase the view count on videos, while less popular markets are overlooked.

Total mentions

Social media mentions are calculated by analysing the number of times a brand is mentioned by name online over a set period. So, we've created a definitive list of those deemed naughty or nice by analysing the total mentions for UK Christmas markets over the past year.

With 14,000 total mentions, Winter Wonderland is in the lead once again. Ranking consistently highly, it has earned the top spot by proving to be one of the markets which gets people searching, posting, sharing and tagging.

York Christmas market takes second place with a respectable 9,400 total mentions. 2022 marks the 30th year of York’s St Nicholas Fair, and in addition to the usual array of traders and artisan products, you can also book a table at The Winter Hütte, a new traditional Swiss chalet restaurant from Yorkshire’s Michelin-starred chef Andrew Pern.

With 442 mentions, the lowest ranked on our list is Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. Located on the Blenheim Estate, visitors can enjoy an illuminated trail through the gardens and marvel at the themed interior of Britain’s greatest palace. Unlike most other markets, Blenheim’s is a ticketed event with limited capacity and timed entry; booking is required. As a more exclusive event, lower capacity could contribute to fewer online mentions.

Social listening

Total mentions help us analyse how much people talk about an event online, but it doesn’t account for whether their experiences were good or bad. To better understand how much people enjoyed visiting each Christmas market, we used social listening to determine the percentage of positive and negative mentions.

Against the backdrop of the cathedral, the Winchester Christmas market is considered one of the best in Europe. Of all online mentions, 23% are positive, showing that visitors enjoy their time and are keen to share their experiences with others. In contrast, 31% of Nottingham market’s mentions are negative.

Most and least popular

As we have seen, there are many ways to analyse social media users’ Christmas market preferences. But overall, which is the most popular? Using the data from Instagram hashtags, Tiktok views, total mentions, and the percentage of these which are positive and negative, we can create an average index score.

The most popular Christmas market, with an average index score of 0.75, is Winter Wonderland, and the least popular is Newcastle (2.40).

So, which Christmas market takes your fancy?

Whichever Christmas market you visit this festive season, ensure you’re ready to capture photos and videos to share those special moments. A refurbished phone from Envirofone passes through rigorous testing, so you’re guaranteed a ‘like-new’ product for only a fraction of the price of a new phone.

Methodology

We compiled a list of fifteen Christmas markets throughout the UK and sourced data five different factors to find the most and least popular Christmas markets in the UK.

• The number of Instagram hashtags – sourced by Instagram
• The number of TikTok views – sourced by TikTok
• Total mentions of each Christmas market, using Brandwatch
• % Positive sentiment volume of mentions, using Brandwatch
• % Negative sentiment volume of mentions, using Brandwatch

Each market was ranked according to each individual factor, before carrying out a weighted ranking to provide each market with an average index score to provide a definitive ranking when all factors are combined.