Despite the uncertain prospects for household budgets, and therefore for footfall and spending, there was positive news for retailers at the start of the Platinum Jubilee bank holiday period.
Diane Wehrle, marketing & insights director of retail expert Springboard, said: “On Thursday, footfall rose by +17.7% across all retail destinations from the week before, with increases from the previous week in all three key destination types: high streets, shopping centres, and retail parks.
“However, it was high streets that were the star performers on Thursday, undoubtedly helped by the warm and sunny weather and Jubilee events being held in many town centres, with a rise of +22.6% on Thursday versus +14.8% in shopping centres and +10.2% in retail parks.
“All types of town centre benefited on Thursday but given the good weather and the fact that it was a school half term holiday, coastal towns had delivered an exceptional performance, with footfall increasing by a huge +63.7% from the previous Thursday, resulting in an uplift of +21.3% from the 2019 level on that one day.
“On Friday and Saturday, footfall was lower than on the same days in the previous week (-6.7% on Friday and -10.4% on Saturday), as shoppers turned their attention to more local jubilee celebrations.
“But high streets remained slightly more resilient than retail parks or shopping centres (footfall in high streets declined from the week before by -4.3% on Friday and -9.4% on Saturday versus -8% on Friday and -11.5% on Saturday from the week before in retail parks, and -10.2% and -11.4% from the week before in shopping centres).”
Springboard provides insights on bricks-and-mortar retail activity, tracking and forecasting footfall and delivering performance metrics across all key retail destination types. It records more than 70 million footfall counts per week at 4,500 counting points across 480 different shopping sites in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
