TOWN centre shops have decided to continue opening late despite the Christmas light switch-on being delayed until next week.
Businesses are hoping that festive discounts – and sparkling wine – will still tempt shoppers out despite the weather.
The Parish of St Helier postponed the switch-on, which usually heralds the start of late-night town shopping, from today until 24 November, after saying high winds and heavy rain had made it impossible for the event to go ahead safely on the day.
Voisins are still holding their annual gala evening to kick-start Christmas shopping and offering free gifts, discounts and glasses of fizz to mark the start of the key shopping season.
Voisins head of marketing Sarah Sacriste said they did not want to disappoint customers by a late change of plans.
She added: ‘We think the delay to the Christmas lights may impact on our footfall in the evening but it might just spread it out throughout the day.
‘The weather forecast could be bad for a number of weeks to come and all of us will be impacted by it, so we thought it’s worth doing this now.’
River Island also said they would be staying open until 9pm today. Assistant manager Monika Golebiewska said: ‘It’s such a lovely event with champagne, Santa and his elf on the shopfloor, sweets all around. I think lots of people will be coming in. It’s going to beautiful.’
But Jersey Pearl said they had decided not to open late this week because of the lights, the weather and traditionally their sales increased later in December.
Venue manager Paul Melia said: ‘I don’t think postponing turning on the Christmas lights will affect us necessarily. We’re still debating when to have late-night opening as our sales trend is that we see our number of customers rising later, particularly in the last two weeks before Christmas’.
