UK retail footfall inches up ahead of crucial Black Friday week

By

Nigel TAYLOR

Published
Nov 20, 2023

As retailers and consumers prepare for the Black Friday onslaught, footfall across all UK retail destinations edged up just 0.4% week on week in the last seven days (12-19 November).

Despite that marginal boost, footfall slumped by 2.2% compared to a year ago as shoppers “faced challenging weather conditions and held out for this week's Black Friday sales”, said retail analysts MRI Software.

The strongest performance was seen across high streets where footfall rose 1%, while shopping centres also witnessed a modest 0.6% rise in footfall. However, usually resilient retail parks saw footfall decline by 1.3% from the week before.

It was a week of two halves for retailers, with the first half seeing footfall dip 5.5% across all UK destinations due to those challenging weather conditions.

But footfall was up in second half of the week with high streets seeing a noticeable gain, up 6.7% from Wednesday to Saturday compared to the previous week’s performance.

And there was some optimism to be gleaned for the high street as the gap compared to pre-pandemic 2019 footfall narrowed from -13.9% in the previous week to -13.6%.

But while smaller than on high streets alone, the gap across all UK retail destinations widened from -11.4% to -12.2%. That was because the gap seen in shopping centres grew to -18.1% from -16.6% in the week before. It also dipped to -2.9% from -0.5% in retail parks.

Footfall was boosted in seven out of 10 UK geographical regions, as Scotland faced a significant decline (-5.1% compared to the previous week) amid heavy rain and strong winds. Coastal towns and Greater London were also affected as footfall fell 4.6% and 3.7% respectively.