It’s our tradition to begin Open Enrollment for Holiday Market in July – and we’ve just pushed out the vendor landing page/information to the website to make the process simpler.
Due to the Chattanooga Convention Center and Chattanooga Tourism not allowing us to reserve our indoor festival dates in 2025, in favor of an indoor CFC event, we are holding a two-day outdoor festival at the First Horizon Pavilion followed by a double-weekend indoor festival in Knoxville at the Worlds Fair Expo Center. While at first disappointed with the change, we quickly realized how much better organized and professional Knoxville is with their convention halls, and now are quite excited by the changes.
On Chattanooga Holiday Market: this event will quickly sell out as existing market vendors are given priority, and space will be reduced due to the ice rink partnership. As such, we will not be accepting infrequent or new vendors for the Pavilion Holiday Market.
Here are a few highlights of the Knoxville experience:
vendors will be able to order and manage a wide variety of services from an online portal with the venue, including electricity, food orders and other services offered. It gives you complete control over your needs, and lets you to customize your experience to fit your needs.
all vendors will be allowed to drive in to load/unload your booths! This is so huge, but does have a few logistical complications – as you might expect, people on the furtherest point from the loading entrance will need to load in first, and load out last. Your ability to arrive at a given timeslot will impact your booth location, etc.
We are guaranteed a no-reload clause in our agreement; you will remain in place for the duration of the festival (both weekends + midweek). Such a simple thing, made so complicated by Chattanooga in the past.
We are guaranteed a first-right of renewal for future years! Again, basic business done correctly - if we like the experience, we can renew without risk of unexpected booting for another event.
There will be a dedicated loading staging area with traffic attendants, and a dedicated vendor parking area. This will handle most, if not all, of our vendors, and of course there is additional parking in structures nearby. I do think there is a fee for this lot, but don’t have those details.
Finally, we will be receiving hotel discount codes for our vendors for a property or two (while inventory lasts) – I believe it is a Hampton Inn or something along those lines (will update this in the future). The adjacent property is very nice, and a lot more expensive, and downtown/surrounding area is filled with loads of options.
The rates of the festival are actually a bit lower than what Chattanooga Convention Center is raising their fees to, so it would seem that Knoxville is holding most of the advantages at this point.
While we know that not everyone from the Chattanooga Holiday Market will attend, we do expect (and have communicated with) groups of new artisans from the East Tennessee, North Carolina and West Virginia area who may join us. We’ve also been investing heavily into marketing plans for this year, and I’m pretty excited about the year ahead.
If you wish to join us for Holiday Market in Knoxville, please visit this link and register - it’s going to be an exciting time!
That’s a good question – we went back and forth as to whether to bundle it, but in the end decided to make it separate because not everyone wants to participate in that format (double-day, holiday-centric) market. Link to that announcement below.
Because space is limited, we will prioritize Season Pass holders followed by priority points/etc. for the selection process.
So does that mean that the people that sign up early will be in the back and the people that sign up late will be in the front? Or vice versa. Phil always likes to get there early.
It sounds really great.
And is the Hampton inn within walking distance?
Also, I’m pretty sure we put a deposit down on it. I don’t remember what the fees are for this market in the Holiday Market at the pavilion will be outside correct? And we will have to pay an extra fee for that as it is not included in the season pass?
I’ll have to loop back with you on the hotel info, it’s “in the works” but I don’t have all of the details at the moment.
And yes, we will have a scheduling approach where those who can/want to arrive early for setup will be placed furthest to the right (loading dock is to the left) — not really a front/back thing, more of a left/right arrangement.
Finally - Oktoberfest and Holiday Markets are not included in the Season Pass (see the link in a previous post which details what is/not included in the SP). Not everyone wants to participate in those two events, so bundling would have hurt some people. We’re fans of opt-ins when practical.
Thanks!! I went back and looked at the invoice and I have already prepaid for it and Oktoberfest. Should have looked at that first and I could have answered my own question.
My brain can’t remember if we are all set for the Chattanooga Holiday Market at the Pavilion, and The Knoxville Holiday Market? Do we need to do anything??
Hi Anett! We are busy processing the hundred+ vendors/booths on the holiday list, and I saw your name for certain on Tuesday — so your email and invoices should be arriving soon! It just a bit of a time-consuming process, thanks for your patience. It’s coming!
It’s going to be a great event, and we’re looking forward to your involvement!
Checking the floor map above, we assume the "1"s in the green boxes represent the 10x10 booths and the "2"s (in blue) represent the double booths. Is that correct? Another question is regarding “…vendors will be allowed to drive in to load/unload your booths.” Does this mean that vans or pickup trucks will be able to enter the booth location area, or does it refer to the loading dock outside the Expo area? Finally, regarding the location of each vendor’s booth: Vendor booth locations will be assigned based on those who arrive earliest on the first Saturday or those who signed up earliest through Genius. Thanks again.
1s and 2s: Correct; 1=single booth, 2=doubles; that’s a starting framework, we may divide the doubles into singles (or even act reversely, and combine singles into a double) as demand dictates.
Drive-In: During our Friday load, vendors will be allowed to drive in to their booth inside the facility, unload, park, then return to finish setup. This is a bit of a complicated process, as early drive-in slots will need to be for people on the most interior portion of the venue (furthest away from the loading dock, but closest to the hotel/first set of entrance doors). We will begin to coordinate that process once the paid booths reaches an appropriate saturation point.
Saturday load-ins will not be able to drive in, so they would revert to a dump-at-dock and push strategy more commonly used.
Locations: almost; to facilitate the drive-in process above, booths will be placed based on when a vendor is able to arrive/setup on Friday. We will work to schedule the early-birds furthest away from the loading dock (because driving in makes life simple!), and the late setups closer to the dock (push in only).
Great questions, very thoughtful and well considered on your part! We’re not starting that side of the process just yet, but likely will mid October/early November.
Hi Larry - we’re in a different building, in a different city, this year - so it’s just not possible to keep the same booth locations.
I don’t remember if we even had the early bird available during Holiday 2024, but the layout is different regardless - the Knoxville venue shape and dimensions are different.
