Study says Sheffield's Christmas Market doesn't make 'most instagrammable' list - but what do they know?

Finance and budgeting company CashLady.com emailed The Star to let us know Manchester had been crowned most ‘Insta-worthy’ in the UK in a press release that saw fit to imply Sheffield’s festive offerings on The Moor was so meagre it didn’t break the top 10, which had Nottingham in tenth at 4,853 hashtags and Manchester in first with 54,753.

The Star’s own findings is the number of posts reached 2,837. The Star’s other findings are that Christmas on The Moor was brilliant.

The relocation of the Christmas big wheel was met with some grumblings when it was first announced, a wincing byproduct of the ongoing troubles at the Container Park. And maybe placing it on The Moor was a bit of ‘that’ll do’ job when it was planned. Now, I would argue to keep the market on the Moor for good going forward.

I can now see planting the Wheel on Fargate, squeezed in where it couldn’t be appreciated, was a waste of its potential. Not compared to its pride-and-joy placement on The Moor, lit up like a spaceship and commanding the promenade. Hashtags on Instagram say nothing to the hundreds of thousands of photos taken this past month of happy families with the Wheel behind them.

For personal reasons, I’ve needed to walk through town centre every day and most evenings for the past two months. Since the market’s arrival on November 18, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the town so buzzingly, consistently busy day after day.

In the first week during November, I thought it could just be hype. Then it was still bustling in early December, but they could just be the throng of one-time visitors. But by mid December, with the promenade still packed, still full of schoolkids out enjoying waffles and co-workers stopping for a two-hour evening stop off at the Alpine Bar, I couldn’t ignore how popular it was.

Maybe reshuffling the 50+ log cabins and three chalet bars across the city centre made visiting the market more of a full-day-out experience to come back for. Maybe more buyers this year wanted to shop local and make the most of the traders at the log cabins. Maybe moving the wheel made proceedings seem bigger than in recent years.

But this year’s market did something right. It was grander, cosier, and, yes, more Instagrammable, even if they weren’t collated under an umbrella hashtag. These pasts six weeks, Sheffield was drumming with more footfall day after day than I’ve seen since the Euros.

So it seems acceptable to me that the City Council did not throw money away on a social media campaign to remind visitors they were, in fact, standing in the middle of the #SheffieldChristmasMarket. Apologies to goers of the #ManchesterChristmasMarket, who needed a prompt.

How did you find the market compared to previous years and to other cities? Get in touch to share your experiences.