Tricks, trips and trends: Halloween is becoming a big-spending holiday
CBC
A new event featuring 6,000 real and synthetic hand-carved pumpkins is drawing large crowds for a nighttime stroll through Edmonton's Borden Park.
Kevin Blackburn, a co-owner with Lantern Events Inc., said 3,000 to 4,000 people a night have been taking in the experience since it opened on Sept. 29.
"I love Halloween," Blackburn said. "We're very excited about how things have turned out and we're very much looking forward to coming back next year."
The warmer fall weather has helped attendance but so did people's eagerness to celebrate the spooky season free of pandemic restrictions, he said.
The company is also running Pumpkins After Dark shows in Milton, Ont., Burnaby, B.C., and in Calgary.
You can see more at Pumpkins After Dark on the Halloween Edition of Our Edmonton on Saturday at 10 a.m., Sunday at noon and 11 a.m. on Monday on CBC TV and CBC Gem.
"Edmontonians really do love festivals, they love events — people like to come out," said Blackburn.
He noted that people are spending more on costumes, more on decorations and more on fun things to do in the fall.
"Halloween is the fastest growing consumer holiday in North America," he said.
In fact, the spooky season has now overtaken Easter as the second-biggest spending holiday in Canada after Christmas, according to Heather Thomson, executive director at the University of Alberta's Alberta School of Business Centre for Cities and Communities.
In 2019, before the pandemic, the average Canadian spent just under $100 during the Halloween season.
She's drawing on data from the Retail Council of Canada, Statistics Canada and credit card companies.
Most of that money is spent on candy, pumpkins and other decorations and costumes, but Thomson said spending is increasing on Halloween experiences like Dark, Deadmonton and other corn mazes, haunted houses and ghost tours.
"People are looking at experiences to sell, and that's a new form of retail, and this is a huge part of it," she said.
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