Home and Garden Focus Boosts Late May Bank Holiday Footfall

A focus on the home and garden over bank holiday supported retail parks and shopping centres, helped by changeable weather.

Footfall across all UK destinations was -2.8% lower over Bank Holiday weekend this year than last year, although Springboard's analysis of footfall has revealed that an annual decline generally and also over bank holidays is the long term trend. 

However it appears that retail parks performed well, with increases in footfall from last year on both Sunday and Monday (+5.4% and +1.4%) with footfall on Saturday remaining level with last year. The change from the previous week, was much more significant, with a rise of +4.3% on Sunday and +13.7% on Monday.

The slightly uncertain weather also meant that the covered environments of shopping centres were more appealing to consumers than high streets. On Sunday footfall in shopping centres was level with last year but -6.8% lower than last year in high streets.  And on Monday footfall was only -0.1% down annually in shopping centres, but -4.6% down in high streets. 

Diane Wehrle said “The positive results for retail parks indicate that consumers were focusing on garden and home improvements over the bank holiday weekend, although there also may have been an element of TV purchasing in advance of key footfall matches next week (Liverpool v Tottenham in the Champions League final from Barcelona on Saturday evening, and Arsenal v Chelsea and the UEFA Europa League final on Wednesday evening in Baku).”

Diane went on to say that “While shopping centres often lose out to high streets over bank holidays due to their more limited hospitality offer, shopping centres come into their own when the weather is rainy providing an opportunity to browse in comfort, and this is exactly what occurred over this bank holiday weekend.”

Source : Insight DIY Team and Springboard

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