Disappointing Retail Footfall During Last Weekend Before Christmas

Springboard has published retail footfall data for week 50 (last week), revealing that Central London, UK cities and high streets experienced a disappointing pre-Christmas weekend as nervousness surrounding covid grows.

To ensure its insights are as relevant as possible, Springboard has introduced a year-on-year 2021 vs 2019 comparison for footfall.

Springboard - Shopping Centre Index - Week 50 2021

2021 vs 2020 = +15.3%

2021 vs 2019 = -27.2%

Week-on-week = +5.3%

Springboard's Marketing and Insights Director, Diane Wehrle, said: 

"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. 

The nervousness of shoppers about making in-person shopping visits inevitably meant that large city centres lost out to smaller high streets, particularly over the weekend when footfall declined from the week before in Central London and large cities outside of the capital whilst rising in market towns."

Source : Insight DIY using Springboard data

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