UK retail footfall rose 2.3% last week compared with the previous seven days as shoppers took advantage of warmer weather to make spontaneous trips to stores, industry data revealed on Monday.
Most of the rise in the week to March 19 was driven by high streets where footfall rose 4.2% against a smaller 0.5% increase at shopping centres and 0.1% in retail parks, according to retail consultancy Springboard.
In coastal towns footfall rose 8.5% week on week versus just 3.1% in market towns, 4.9% in central London and 4.7% in city centres outside of the capital.
Springboard the arrival of sunnier days and increased shopper traffic could be “an indication that the flexibility of hybrid home/office working could be enabling consumers to make trips to retail destinations during the working week”.
“In coastal towns on Friday, footfall rose by a staggering 40.8% from the previous Friday, versus an average of 24.7% in other town types, and then by 10.7% on Saturday whilst across all other town types it rose by just +2.1% on Saturday,” it added.
Diane Wehrle, insightsdDirector at Springboard, comments said there was a “surprisingly strong” uplift in footfall in high streets on Friday given that it was a working day – more than five times as large as the rise on Saturday.
