Despite the uncertain prospects for household budgets, Platinum Jubilee bank holiday period brought cheer to the high streets last week, states a recent report citing increased footfall.
According to Springboard’s Store Sales Tracker, on Thursday (9), footfall rose by +17.7 percent across all retail destinations from the week before, with increases from the previous week in all three key destination types.
However, it was high streets that were the star performers, undoubtedly helped by the warm and sunny weather and Jubilee events being held in many town centres, with a rise of +22.6 percent on Thursday versus +14.8 percent in shopping centres and +10.2 percent in retail parks.
All types of town centre benefited on Thursday but given the good weather and the fact that it was a school half term holiday coastal towns had exceptional performance, with footfall increasing by a huge +63.7 percent from the previous Thursday, resulting in an uplift of +21.3 percent from the 2019 level on that one day.
The tracker further shows that on Friday (3) and Saturday (4), footfall was lower than on the same days in the previous week (-6.7 percent on Friday and -10.4 percent on Saturday), as shoppers turned their attention to more local jubilee celebrations, but high streets remained slightly more resilient than either retail parks or shopping centres (footfall in high streets declined from the week before by -4.3 percent on Friday and -9.4 percent on Saturday versus -8 percent on Friday and -11.5 percent on Saturday from the week before in retail parks, and -10.2 percent and -11.4 percent from the week before in shopping centres).
Overall, in-store sales were +5 percent higher in May than in May 2019, fueled by increases in sales in nine out of ten categories as savings accrued through the pandemic period and spending in advance of much longed for holidays continued to fuel store spend.
