Footfall rises in the UK with the recent heatwave but not everywhere
Springboard has reported that the recent heatwave had a positive impact on footfall across all retail destinations last week, rising +0.8%. Shopping centres and retail parks saw the biggest increases with +2.4% and +1.9% respectively thanks largely to their accessibility, open air and the benefits of climate-controlled facilities.
Tourist hotspots including coastal and historic towns also saw improvement. Footfall rose +0.3% in coastal towns and +0.9% in historic towns as people enjoyed ‘staycations’ during the school holiday period.
High Street footfall declined by -0.5% for the period. Footfall across all UK retail destinations still remains around a third lower than in 2019.
Diane Wehrle, Insights Director at Springboard said, “The first week of the peak summer holiday period delivered spectacularly hot weather but largely lacklustre footfall performance. Customer activity across UK retail destinations rose marginally from the week before but the uplift was less than a third of the increase recorded in the previous week. It was clearly high streets – where footfall marginally decreased – that subdued the overall result, whilst in shopping centres and retail parks footfall rose from the week before. Despite the poor performance across high streets nationally, footfall in coastal and historic town centres rose marginally, undoubtedly due to the school holiday period and hot weather, whilst in regional cities and in London in particular footfall declined.â€
