Zac Standish
THE school holidays are in full swing and Morwell’s Mid Valley Shopping Centre is beaming with life as parents look to get their children out of the house and engaged in exciting activities.
For the centre, the school holidays brings with it a sharp increase in foot traffic making it an important period for retailers still looking to bounce back from the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.
Cotton On manager Krystal Killeen said the school holidays were always an exciting time for her business.
“Every school holidays we have so many people come through just because of the incentives they do in the centre, so it is really great to see that increased traffic,” Ms Killeen said.
“This period gives us such a boost, we definitely get a lot of extra customers as a result of the work the centre does to promote the school holidays which makes it a very important period for us.”
Ms Killeen said she makes sure to have extra stock on the shelves and staff in store to deal with the extra rush of customers.
“For school holidays we always have somebody at the front welcoming people into the store and we always have extra staff on just to help people out because the traffic that comes in is so good,” she said.
“During any normal week are looking at around 100 people per day, but during school holidays that improves to at least 250 which in turn just gives a massive boost business wise.”
To coincide with the increased amount of people coming through the doors, Mid Valley stage a number of different shows and activities to draw parents to the centre and keep children engaged throughout the holidays.
Black Snake Productions headline the schedule these holidays, with the wildlife engagement company putting on presentations for the entire two weeks.
Presenter Ebony Cody described what the show is all about and the animals on display.
“What we are talking about is our endangered species of Australia, here we have the highest extinction rate in the world for our wild animals so we need to educate our kids more on the topic of conversation so they understand the how important the message is,” Ms Cody said.
“We have got a fruit bat, snakes, an endangered barking owl, bullfrogs, a Mary River turtle and a brush tail possum so we do go about trying to show off a real range of cool species people may not know too much about.”
Ms Cody said the Latrobe Valley community was a driving force behind them continually coming back to put these shows on.
“We come here to Mid Valley pretty well every year, with 2020 being the exception, and we just absolutely love the community,” she said.
“The crowd here is always amazing and really supportive, they love the animals but also love to hear about them as well not just feel and touch them, they want to know about where they live and what they can do to help them which is fantastic.”
