• The City of Melbourne has celebrated its first “FOMO Friday”, a series of activations and offers it hopes will draw workers back into the CBD.
• The initiative comes in partnership with the Property Council of Australia, which has strongly pushed for workers to return to the office after a year of remote work.
• Pedestrian traffic was down on average levels on Friday, Lord Mayor Sally Capp said, but she described turnout for the first of four activations as a “pleasing result”.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Frigid temperatures may have stopped Melbourne residents from braving the central business district on Friday night, but that hasn’t chilled the City’s hopes for its “FOMO Fridays” initiative, part of a $30 million push to drive workers back into the office and stimulate trade across the Hoddle Grid.

Each Friday from May 14 to June 4, the City of Melbourne, in partnership with the Property Council of Australia (PCA) and the Australian Retailers Association, will hold a series of activations, events, and in-store deals to revitalise business in the CBD.

“FOMO Friday” highlights include pop-up markets, two-for-one deals at inner-city bars and restaurants, and even free fortune-telling sessions at the QV shopping complex.

The initiative comes after the PCA called for government assistance to encourage office workers — who largely fled the city when the coronavirus pandemic first forced workplaces to close a year ago — to leave home and return to the high-rise.

“FOMO Fridays are about more than having fun – they’re about supporting local businesses and keeping Melburnians in jobs,” Lord Mayor Sally Capp told Business Insider Australia.

Driving workers back into the CBD makes good business sense, the PCA says.

As of late April, just 41% of Melbourne’s CBD offices were occupied, the property lobby said. That extended downturn has diminished trade in the CBD, where small businesses are still reeling from the loss of the JobKeeper wage subsidy.

And fewer white-collar workers in one place is bad news for major commercial real estate firms, who bank on firms filling traditional office spaces.

Property titan Lendlease, which has aggressively challenged 2020’s seismic shift to remote work, is one of several firms to hold lobby activations and on-site events to promote “FOMO Fridays”.

The initiative is bankrolled by the Victorian Government and City of Melbourne’s joint $100 million Melbourne City Recovery Fund, which has allocated $30 million to “support COVIDSafe events and cultural activities to attract visitors back to the CBD when it is safe to do so.”

For all that fanfare and fiscal support, Melbourne’s response to the first “FOMO Friday” is difficult to immediately quantify.

Publicly available foot traffic data shows pedestrian activity was below four-week rolling averages across much of the city Friday evening, while anonymised Google Mobility data shows CBD ‘workplace’ visitation was 26% below baseline levels.

Capp said pedestrian activity was roughly 70% below pre-pandemic levels, suggesting it was a brisk wave of chilly autumn weather, not a new preference for remote work, which may have kept people home.

That attendance was still a “pleasing result,” the Lord Mayor said, adding that those who did venture into the CBD were rewarded.

“Hundreds of people” still participated in “FOMO Friday” activations, she said, with 200 free hampers from gourmet deli King and Godfree “snapped up in just 34 minutes.”

The initiative cuts across a growing acceptance of hybrid work within titans of Australian business. Just today, major firms including Commonwealth Bank, Deloitte, and QBE signed on as ‘family friendly workplaces’, guaranteeing their employees flexible working plans.

For now, the City of Melbourne hopes the “positive experiences” of the first Friday outing will convince more city workers to pull themselves from underneath the doona, potentially warming up the CBD economy in the process.

“We’re encouraging people to head out after work and enjoy all that the City of Melbourne has to offer,” Capp said.

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