UK cities and high streets see disappointing pre-Christmas footflow

Where are the all the Christmas shoppers? Presumably online, as the latest data from retail experts Springboard shows footfall over the pre-Christmas weekend plummeted 8.5 percent in Central London and -6.4 percent in cities outside of the capital. meaning that in high streets across the UK footfall declined -2.6 percent over pre-Christmas weekend.

The week’s footfall increase dropped away sharply from Tuesday when footfall rose by 15.6 percent (in response to a decline of -11.1 percent on the previous Tuesday) to just 2.6 percent on Friday. This was aprecursor to a disappointing performance over the weekend when footfall rose by only 0.8 percent on Saturday and dropped by -1.4 percent on Sunday.

In contrast, the footfall in market towns was up by 3.4 percent and the picture in shopping centres was a little more positive, with a rise of +0.5 percent over the weekend, but retail parks were by far the most popular of the three destination types with a rise in footfall of 4.7 percent. Partly this will have been due to shoppers trying to get a head start in buying food and groceries - the vast majority of retail parks have a food store on them - but it will have also been a result of the “Covid friendly”, open-air nature of retail parks, with large stores that can be easily reached by car and free parking.

The outcome of such a disappointing week was that footfall ended -19.1 percent lower than in 2019 (worsening from -17.7 percent in the week before). However, in contrast with 2020 the picture actually improved with footfall last week being 22.5 percent higher than in the same week last year compared with 18.1 percent higher in the week before.

Diane Wehrle, Insights Director at Springboard commented: “Despite the introduction of Plan B guidance to work from home and the significant rise in Covid infections, footfall rose last week across UK retail destinations. However, the growing nervousness of consumers meant that increases dwindled with each day that passed, and by Friday the uplift in footfall was around just a quarter of that on Wednesday. This provided a forewarning for subdued performance of bricks and mortar stores and destinations over the weekend which, whilst regarded as the peak shopping weekend of the year, is exactly what occurred. Indeed on Saturday footfall increased only very marginally from the week before, and on Sunday it was lower than the week before.