10 New Holiday Self Guided Walking Tour Ideas for BIAs

Feeling the Holiday Pressure? You're Not Alone.

The holiday season is your biggest opportunity to drive sales for local businesses (often representing over a quarter of annual retail revenue, according to organizations like Destination Canada), but (trust me, I know) it’s also the busiest time of year for your team. You’re trying to coordinate lighting displays, manage events, and on top of it all figuring out a new campaign that actually gets people out of their cars and walking into storefronts.

It can feel like you need to triple your budget or hire extra staff just to handle the December rush. The great news is, you don't need either of those things to create a hugely successful holiday activation. You just need a digital, self guided walking tour that turns your existing local charm into a compelling reason to explore using a smart digital tourism platform.

I’ve seen so many small towns and BIAs successfully use mobile platforms to take the pressure off. (It’s all about creating something that’s easy for you to launch and fun for the whole community to do on their own schedule.) When you give people a clear path and a purpose, they will show up.

Why Seasonal Self-Guided Tours Offer a Real-World ROI

The real value of a self-guided experience during the holidays is its efficiency, flexibility, and measurable impact. A well-built digital tour can be launched in days, run 24/7 all season long, and often does the work of a dozen expensive print brochures.

Take the town of Sussex, New Brunswick. They saw a huge win by simply combining their existing holiday lights display with a simple scavenger hunt on a mobile app. The result? Over 3,500 participants in just 30 days! That’s massive engagement for a small community. They took an existing tradition (seeing the lights) and added an interactive layer with rewards that successfully drove repeat visits and family engagement.

Tourism Reality: Transforming an existing local tradition into a gamified, self-guided tour is the most efficient way to achieve massive visitor engagement during the holidays without increasing staff time.

10 Creative Self Guided Walking Tour Ideas to Drive Foot Traffic

If you're looking for inspiration that moves beyond the basic “Downtown Light Tour,” here are ten festive ideas you can launch almost immediately using a self-guided tour app:

1. The Elf-on-the-Shelf Business Scavenger Hunt: Place unique, numbered "elf" cutouts in the windows of participating businesses. Visitors use the app to find the elf, check in at the Point of Interest (POI) to get points, and earn a chance to win a grand prize. It's a clever way to encourage window shopping.

2. Holiday Sweet Treats Tour: A tasting tour focused on local bakeries, cafes, and candy shops. Each stop could offer a digital coupon for a small discount, driving immediate sales.

3. The 'Naughty or Nice' Local History Tour: A slightly cheeky look at the town's holiday history. Highlight historical tales of memorable, quirky, or outright mischievous events that happened during the winter months.

4. DIY Gift Guide Tour (Shop Local Focus): Curate a walking route of small shops based on gift categories (e.g., “Gifts for the Outdoorsy,” “Stocking Stuffers,” “Local Art”). Each stop features a few bolded recommendations from the business owner.

5. Small-Town Christmas Movie Scene Locator: A self-guided tour of the most picturesque streets or architectural spots that look like they belong in a classic holiday movie. Include a link to a local hot chocolate spot at the end.

6. The Ugly Sweater Showcase: Partner with local businesses to display a humorous ‘ugly’ holiday sweater in their window. Users check in at all the stops and vote for the "Ugliest Sweater in Town" to win a local gift basket.

7. Multilingual Seasonal Greetings Tour: Record local residents wishing visitors a happy holiday season in a variety of languages spoken in your community. A simple audio tour celebrating local diversity.

8. Pet-Friendly Photo Op Tour: A route featuring great spots for taking holiday photos with furry friends. Partner with a local pet store for a prize drawing.

9. Gingerbread Architecture Tour: Work with local businesses, schools, or community groups to create gingerbread house replicas of famous local landmarks. Place the replicas in storefront windows and create a tour of the mini-village.

10. The Giving Back Tour: Highlight local charities, food banks, and donation drop-off spots. The tour encourages users to check in at a location after making a donation and includes a link to information on how to volunteer.

Frequently Asked Questions About Self-Guided Holiday Tours

Q: How do digital tour apps save BIAs time and money?

A: Self guided walking tour apps save time because you create the content once and let it run all season without extra staffing. An app allows you to schedule rewards and update business information instantly, saving hours on printing, setup, and on-site coordination. Crescent Heights Village BIA, for example, saved $6,850 in print costs by moving their promotions to a mobile platform. The technology handles the logistics so your team can focus on other holiday tasks.

Q: What’s the easiest way to add rewards and prizes to a walking tour?

A: Rewards work best through gamification. This means giving visitors points or digital entries for checking in at a Point of Interest (POI). Downtown Brampton BIA used digital check-ins during a festival to enter participants into a draw for a $1,000 prize, resulting in over 3,000 digital check-ins in one weekend. You set the rules (e.g., visit 5 out of 10 shops), and the app automatically tracks user progress.

Q: What kind of prize works best for a shop local campaign?

A: The most effective prize is a local gift card or a basket of goods purchased from the businesses featured in the tour. This keeps the money local and supports the businesses that participated. Small, immediate rewards (like a digital coupon for 10% off local coffee) also work brilliantly to encourage action on the spot.

Q: How does this kind of tour support local businesses?

A: These tours are specifically designed to create a direct link from a digital prompt to a local cash register. By using a mobile map, you are actively driving foot traffic to specific shops and attractions. Features like digital coupons and loyalty points drive measurable sales. When you focus on cultural tourism elements (like history or architecture) that lead to a shop, you create a more complete and immersive travel experience, making it easy for you to prove the value of your marketing efforts.

Ready to Launch Your Holiday Campaign?

You have a charming town and dedicated businesses. Now, all you need is the right structure to connect them with motivated visitors. Don’t let another holiday season go by relying on paper maps or high-overhead events.

Start small, pick one of these self guided walking tour ideas, and see how much engagement you can generate. You'll be surprised at the measurable results, just like the teams using simple mobile solutions to amplify their holiday cheer.

Want to see how other towns have turned simple concepts into major foot traffic drivers?

Book a demo, and make this your most measurable and successful holiday season yet.