Planning guide · Shopping centres
How to plan a year-round shopping centre events programme.
A practical framework for marketing and events teams building a calendar of attractions and activities across the year — from the first objective to the way you decide whether it worked.
Step one
Start with the objective, not the attraction.
It is tempting to begin with a photograph of something impressive. A year-round programme is easier to defend, and easier to brief, when it starts from three questions you can answer in a sentence each.
Reason
What the activity is for — a seasonal moment, a family event, a launch, or something to give people a reason to visit on quieter days.
Audience
Who visits the centre at the time you have in mind: families with young children, teenagers, shoppers on a lunch break, or a mix.
Outcome
What you would want to be able to say afterwards, in plain words, before you start choosing attractions.
Write the objective down in one line, in your own words. Every later decision — which season, which attraction, how many sites, how much to spend — gets easier to argue for or against when the line is fixed and visible to the people you work with.
Step two
One seasonal moment, or a programme across the year?
There are three broad ways to shape the work. Each asks something different of your calendar, your site arrangements and your budget planning, so it is worth choosing deliberately rather than drifting into a series of one-off dates.
A single attraction
Suits
One space, one audience, one moment in the calendar.
The simplest place to start. You learn how your visitors respond to an attraction before committing to a calendar.
A seasonal moment
Suits
Activity built around a particular time of year, such as Easter, the summer holidays, Halloween or Christmas.
Useful when a season already carries traffic and sentiment. Plan the attraction around what your centre is already doing at that time.
A year-round programme
Suits
A series of dates across the year, planned together so each season has something to look forward to.
Worth considering when you want visitors to keep returning. It asks more of your calendar, your site arrangements and your budget planning.
Many teams do the two things in sequence: one seasonal moment to test how the audience responds and how the practical arrangements work, then a wider programme built on what that told you.
Step three
Choosing which seasons and dates to consider.
Most centre calendars already have obvious peaks. A year-round programme is usually about the gaps between them, and about giving each season a reason to feel distinct. Each season has its own page with the ideas that suit it.
The periods shown on the season pages are the windows we plan around. Treat them as a starting point for your own calendar, not fixed dates.
Dates worth weighing up
- Your own centre calendar: marketing campaigns, tenant activity, community events and anything already booked into the spaces.
- The school term and holiday pattern for the area you draw visitors from.
- Trading patterns you already see in your own figures — which weekdays, weeks and seasons are quiet, and which are already busy.
- Dates that are fixed for you, and dates where you have flexibility. Say which is which when you brief a supplier.
- Whether your best space is outdoors, and how weather and daylight affect the dates you can realistically use.
- Time for your own internal steps — approvals, managing-agent or landlord sign-off, procurement and budget windows.
Step four
Briefing a supplier about the site, the dates and the audience.
You do not need all of this to start a conversation. The more you can share, the sooner a supplier can tell you what might work — and the sooner you can rule out what will not.
Objectives
What the activity is for, and what a good outcome looks like for you.
Audience
Who visits at the time you have in mind, and who you most want to reach.
Dates
The dates or periods you are considering, how long you want activity to run, and which dates are fixed.
Site and location
Where in the centre it could go — a mall, atrium, car park or outdoor space — and anything you already know about it.
Number of locations
Whether this is for one centre or several in a portfolio, and whether each site is different.
Constraints
Opening-hours rules, access times, delivery windows, paperwork or anything else you already know applies.
Budget envelope
A range rather than a figure, if you can share one. It helps a supplier tell you early what is realistic.
Briefing more than one site? Say so at the start, and note where the sites differ — space, access, footfall or the audience each one draws. The same attraction rarely suits every centre in a portfolio.
If your dates are not settled, say so rather than guessing. “Sometime in October, dates to be agreed” is a useful brief, and a supplier who can work with that will tell you what they need to plan around.
Step five
Questions to discuss before anything is confirmed.
These are topics to talk through with any supplier, including us, before a proposal is settled. They are listed as subjects to raise, not as services, arrangements or standards this page promises.
Space
Which space is available, how big it is, what else uses it, and what the attraction needs to work properly in that space.
Access
How an attraction arrives and leaves — delivery times, loading routes, lift or door sizes, and how set-up and dismantling fit around opening hours.
Power
What power is available where, how far it is from the space, and what the attraction would need. Ask who supplies adapters, cables and any safety checks.
Permissions
Whose approval the activity needs — centre management, the managing agent, the landlord, or a local authority for anything on the public highway.
Responsibilities
Who sets up, operates, supervises and takes down the attraction, and who handles the day-to-day running while it is in place.
Staffing
How many people are needed to run it, what they do, how long they are on site, and whether you have any staff or contractor capacity of your own.
Safety
The risk assessment, method statements and insurance documents your centre team or managing agent will want to see, and who provides them.
Cost
What a proposal includes, what is charged separately, and how your own costs — such as security, cleaning or power — fit alongside it.
A useful test: if a supplier can answer all eight of these without hesitation, the conversation will move faster, and you will know sooner whether the arrangement is workable for your centre.
Step six
Deciding what success should look like.
The hardest part of a year-round programme is not running the dates — it is working out afterwards whether they were worth repeating. That is a planning decision, not a reporting one.
Agree the measures before it runs
Decide what you will look at while the activity is being planned, not afterwards. That is what makes the answer usable for the next decision.
Use what you already collect
Footfall counts, car-park usage, tenant feedback, social mentions and customer comments are already in your routine. Note the dates so you can read them in context.
Add a small number of new measures
If you want more than the existing figures, keep it simple: sign-ups, trail completions, competition entries or a short feedback question at the attraction.
Compare like for like
Set a baseline from a similar period without the activity, so you can describe what changed rather than guess.
Capture the qualitative too
Visitor comments, tenant observations and your own team's view of how the day went often explain the numbers better than the numbers alone.
Write the answer down
A short note after each date builds a picture across the year, and makes the case for a programme much easier than a single impressive weekend.
Decide who owns the review, and when it happens, before the first date. A programme reviewed after the following year’s budget is set is a programme that cannot be changed.
This guide sets out a way of planning. It is not a statement of what Spotted Frog can deliver for your dates, your site or your budget — that is discussed with you directly, and the topics above are the subjects we would talk through with you.
Keep going
Where to take this next.
Planning a programme for your centre?
Tell us the audience, the dates or seasons, the sites and the objective, and we will come back to you.