Central London footfall on Sunday 27 August and bank holiday Monday showed a 10.4% and 9% increase year on year, respectively, reflecting a rise in overseas visitors to the capital, MRI Springboard reported on Tuesday (29 August).
Consumers preferred to use the bank holiday weekend (26-28 August) to travel overseas instead of the UK’s coastal and historic towns, where footfall was up by 22.2% and 20.5% week on week but there was a decrease in visitors compared with the same weekend in 2022.
MRI Springboard found that many shoppers opted to stay local on bank holiday Sunday, based on a 12.9% rise in footfall from the previous Sunday (20 August) in market towns.
Shopping centres showed a 14.2% rise in footfall between the Sundays 20 and 27 of August. Retail park footfall rose by 9.8% week on week for the same day, while high streets experienced the lowest increase of 9%.
MRI Springboard insights director Diane Wehrle said: “Sunday was clearly the peak day of the bank holiday weekend for UK retail destinations in terms of the uplift in footfall – footfall on Sunday was 10.5% higher than the week before, while on both Saturday and Monday footfall was lower than on the same days in the week before (0.2% lower on Saturday and 7.6% lower on Monday).”
On Tuesday (29 August), fashion retailers told Drapers that bank holiday weekend was positive, despite a negative outlook for the months ahead.
https://www.drapersonline.com/news/central-london-scores-bank-holiday-footfall
