UK footfall continued to drop this weekend - Springboard

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 26, 2018

This year’s Black Friday was “a huge hit for online retailers, but did little to help the struggling bricks and mortar stores throughout the UK,” specialist tracking firm Springboard said on Monday morning. 

Overall, Friday footfall declined 5.4% year-on-year with similar falls on Saturday and Sunday (-5.6% on Saturday and -4.3% on Sunday). In contrast, Loqate/GBG recorded online transactions up 46% up to 16:00 on Black Friday.

Shopping centres suffered the most with a footfall decline of 8.3% on Friday and a similar level continuing into the weekend. Springboard said “this is likely to be partially due to the fact that they are dominated by major chains which have a strong online presence and free delivery offering, so there is less need to visit their stores.”

But it added that the large drop in footfall in shopping centres will also be due to the fact that “most have very little hospitality offering, making it difficult to have a trip that combines shopping and eating out.” High streets tend to have a wider hospitality offering, and footfall there dropped by only 4% on Friday and around the same amount over the weekend.

Footfall did manage to rise by 8.6% on Black Friday from the Friday in the week before, but that was hardly a surprise and, worryingly, Saturday was only level with the previous Saturday and Sunday was up only 2.2%.

The researchers also said that if the trend for Cyber Monday follows previous years then it’s unlikely footfall will increase on Monday. Last year it fell 6.1% and over the past three years it has been between 15% and 18% lower than on Black Friday.