Springboard Data Shows Bank Holiday Weekend Footfall Hit by Weather

The cold, windy and rainy weather had a detrimental impact on footfall over the bank holiday weekend, with a decline of -5.1% between Saturday and Monday compared with the bank holiday weekend in 2018. 

High streets were particularly hard hit with a drop of -12.0%, whilst the protected environments of shopping centres made them more attractive to consumers, with a modest rise in footfall of +0.4% over the three days.

Retail parks were the clear winners with footfall +4.1% higher this bank holiday than in 2018, suggesting that the colder weather was an incentive for consumers to stay at home and work on their gardens and interiors rather than take trips out.  Indeed, this was reflected in the significant drop in footfall of -17.6% in coastal towns over the three day weekend compared with a rise of +17.4% last year when the weather was hot and sunny.

Diane Wehrle, Springboard’s Marketing and Insights Director, says “These figures, and Springboard's data generally, reveals that the combination of the choice of online vs bricks and mortar and the increasing demand for leisure experiences, means that consumers have become increasingly weather sensitive. We have already seen the impact of this clearly on bank holiday footfall over the past couple of years, and inevitably this is likely to have even greater implications for bank holidays moving forward.”

Year on Year % change in footfall from Early May BH 2018

Source : Springboard

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