Camberley is currently second in the Great Town and City Christmas Quiz, a national competition where places all around the UK compete against each other for a chance of being crowned the smartest Christmas town or city of 2020.
Places are ranked on the leaderboard, and over 70 towns and cities have taken part so far. There is also the opportunity to win a £1500 Love Camberley Gift Card in the prize draw.
The Love Camberley Gift Card has been active in our area since September, is a multi-venue gift card that is designed to encourage local shopping, and helps to keep money locked into the area. It has been introduced by Collectively Camberley, the not for profit business improvement district (BID) that supports businesses in the town centre and is part of the award-winning Town and City Gift Cards programme from fintech Miconex, active in over 50 towns and cities around the UK and Ireland.
Each Love Camberley Gift Card is a prepaid Mastercard and can be spent locally in restaurants like 7 Bone Burger Company and Wildwood, salons like Beauty by Fabi, and O’Sheen, national retailers such as Deichmann and Primark, independent retailers including Camberley Travel, Rocheres and the Rock Box Record Store and on leisure/attractions such as Camberley Theatre.
Research from Visa and the Centre for Economics and Business Research has shown that shoppers can double the amount of money that stays in their local economy by consciously choosing to shop local, also suggesting that 81% of people are supporting local businesses more this year.
Town and City Gift Cards are multi-venue gift cards that can be spent across a wide variety of shops, restaurants, leisure and services in a particular town or city. Data from the Gift Card Voucher Association suggests that the popularity of multi-venue gift cards is rising, to 37.7% of all gift cards purchased in October, from 36.9%. The data also revealed that 62.7% of people worry about buying single brand gift cards.
Jodie MacAndrew from Collectively Camberley said: “Consumer behaviour has changed in 2020 as people have started to understand just how vital local shopping is to local economies. At the same time, the loss of national retailers has led people to worry about buying single retailer gift cards. The Love Camberley Gift Card can be spent with over 60 merchants in Camberley. It’s a secure way to give a gift card that also offers plenty of choice for the recipient.
“It’s fantastic that Camberley is currently second in the Great Town and City Christmas Quiz, with another push, I think we could win. I’d also love someone local to win the prize, and choose a £1500 Love Camberley Gift Card. They could do all of their Christmas shopping, have a salon treatment or haircut every month for a year or even treat themselves to a holiday in 2021. There are so many ways it could be spent.”
There is much debate about the smartest place in the UK. Eurostat found that southern counties like Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire have the highest number of people who’ve been to university in 2019, but the Great Town and City Christmas Quiz tests knowledge of popular culture and history.
All 10 questions in the Great Town and City Christmas Quiz are themed around Christmas and famous gifts, such as the gift Ebenezer Scrooge gave to the Cratchit family, the wish made by Kevin McCallister in Home Alone and the $1.1 million gift given by Richard Taylor to Elizabeth Taylor in 1969.
To take part in the quiz, compete on behalf of Camberley and be in with a chance of winning the £1500 Love Camberley Gift Card, visit townandcitygiftcards.com/christmasquiz/
