DreamLand organises 13,500 video calls with St Nicholas

Thursday, October 22, 2020

13,500 video calls with St Nicholas

Even St Nicholas has to follow the corona restrictions. To guarantee the safety of St Nicholas, the children and their parents, unfortunately St Nicholas will not be able to pay his customary visits to the DreamLand stores this year. "However, meeting St Nicholas is such a magical moment many children look forward to", says Dieter Struye, Colruyt Group Non-food General Manager. "And we at DreamLand will not allow this to pass. After intensive consultation with St Nicholas, we have come to a safe and modern solution: as of Monday 26 October, parents will be able to register their children for a personal video call with St Nicholas." Sing a song, ask a question or show a drawing: between 7 November and 5 December, children will be able to meet St Nicholas live during a personal online video call. The calls will take place on Wednesday afternoons, Friday evenings and on Saturdays. However, it's important that parents make an appointment with St Nicholas in advance, so that he can keep his big book up-to-date. During registration, parents can choose a time slot and enter additional information about their child(ren) to allow St Nicholas to include their personal interests, specific facts etc. After registration, parents will be sent a link giving them access to the video platform to call St Nicholas. Registration starts on Monday 26 October through www.dreamland.be/bel-met-de-sint. Currently, a whopping 13,500 time slots are provided. Dieter Struye: "This way, we want to give as many families as possible the opportunity to call St Nicholas. If we see that the demand exceeds the offer, we will try to increase our capacity even more."

Safe shopping remains our number one priority: longer opening hours and increased online capacity

This autumn, DreamLand continues to make efforts for safe St Nicholas and holiday shopping.  For example, the DreamLand stores will be open later from 23 November to 5 December, so that crowds during the holiday period can be spread. The stores will open 30 minutes earlier than usual, at 9.30 a.m. instead of 10 a.m., and will stay open 1 hour later, until 7.30 p.m. Of course, the stores continue to offer the standard safety measures such as disinfection poles at the entrance and exit, disinfected shopping trolleys, stickers on the floor to indicate the walking direction and Plexiglas screens at the checkouts.  In addition, DreamLand is focusing on online shopping more than ever. Dieter Struye: "Since the lockdown in March, customers have found their way to our webshop en masse. Especially the possibility to pick up your online reservation with your grocery shopping at a Colruyt or OKay store proved very popular." The "Quick pick-up" option is also used a lot. With this option, customers first check whether the article they want is still in stock at their DreamLand store, after which they can reserve it and already pick it up within 3 hours.  To prepare for this period, the online range was also thoroughly expanded and the capacity was increased. Dieter Struye: "We expect a new huge increase of the number of online orders at DreamLand.  In order to process every order smoothly, we have adjusted the logistic systems to larger volumes, optimised our processes at the warehouse and provided a pool of temporary employees to appeal to."