Halloween in the City: Using Experiential Events to Encourage Engagement on the High Street

While Christmas has traditionally been the major seasonal draw for town and city centres, Halloween has become an increasingly important tool for place managers, encouraging people to visit and spend time in a place, while creating more opportunities to support local businesses. In this article, Diogo Silva, Nikos Ntounis and Daniel Paiva explore that potential through a case study of Halloween in the City (HitC), examining how the event creates new experiences and connections in Manchester city centre.

As high streets and city centres continue to evolve beyond their traditional retail functions, place managers are increasingly tasked with creating compelling reasons for people to visit, dwell and explore. Events have become an important mechanism through which places can attract diverse audiences, animate underutilised spaces and encourage movement across different parts of the city centre.

One such event takes place during the final week of October in Manchester, attracting families and visitors to a unique urban festival. Halloween in the City (HitC), organised by the business improvement district CityCo, celebrates its 10th year in 2026. The event exemplifies how cities can be reimagined as experiential spaces. For one week, Manchester city centre is transformed into a playground filled with giant rooftop monsters, live entertainment, storytelling and family activities. As a family-oriented event, emphasis is placed on creating meaningful experiences through carefully staged monster displays, walking trails and interactive activities. For place managers, events that encourage people to circulate, spend time within a place and engage with a broader range of amenities help create a city-wide experience that connects different parts of Manchester into a coherent visitor journey.

By blending memory, imagination and place, HitC transforms ordinary urban spaces into sites of discovery and engagement for high street users, attracting more than 250,000 visitors in 2023 while generating substantial media and social media attention. The event in 2025 attracted 155,808 views, while promotional campaigns generated almost 3.4 million social media impressions, including 1.93 million on Facebook, nearly 989,000 on Instagram and more than 484,000 on TikTok.

HitC’s experiential emphasis helps reimagine the modern high street beyond its traditional retail role by creating powerful emotional connections between people and the urban fabric. For example, sensory elements such as the colour, lighting and placement of the inflatable Halloween monsters are frequently reconfigured each year, ensuring that returning visitors encounter something new, meaningful and memorable.

The success of Halloween in the City demonstrates how carefully curated atmospheric interventions can encourage people to experience a city centre or town centre differently, generating positive place associations while motivating visitors to navigate, discover and engage with a wider range of urban spaces, businesses and attractions.

Read the article by Diogo Silva, Nikos Ntounis, and Daniel Paiva here.