Springboard detects uplift in pedestrian traffic
Retail destinations and stores finally received some positive news last week, with an increase in footfall of +2.6% from the previous week.
However, all of this was driven an uplift in high street footfall of +6.8%, which was clearly a bounce back from the week before when footfall was severely impacted by the continual heavy rain. Apart from Sunday, high street footfall was much higher on every day, with increases as great as +14.5% on Monday and +13.5% on Thursday.
Less positive news was the fact that footfall in both retail parks and shopping centres declined over the week which, although disappointing, is not unexpected as it follows the same trend as week 25 last year. In both the week was marred by significant week-on-week drops on Saturday (-9% in retail parks and -8.3% in shopping centres), without which their results would have been level with the week before.
Despite the better performance over the week, the rise was not enough to drive an annual increase, with footfall remaining -1.9% lower than in the same week last year. While footfall in high streets and shopping centres declined, in retail parks customer activity increased marginally, all of which occurred in the first half of the week. In high streets and shopping centres, the year on year decline in footfall was virtually comprehensive across all days, bar a rise of +1.9% in high streets on Sunday.
Geographically, as in so many other weeks the annual decline in footfall occurred across the board, ranging from -0.1% in Greater London to -4.8% in the West Midlands. However, this was due to comprehensive year on year declines in high streets and shopping centres, while in retail parks footfall rose year on year in all but three areas.
