European shopping centres upbeat about Christmas spending: new study
A new study is predicting that Christmas holiday spending across Europe is likely to be stronger this year.
The International Council of Shopping Centers’ survey of industry executives, which is part of ICSC’s monthly Pan-European Shopping Centre Executive Opinion report, asked shopping centre executives about their 2013 festive spending forecasts compared with the 2012 season.
An overwhelming 71% of respondents said they anticipated that the 2013 Christmas season would be better than last year. Of that group, almost a fifth said they believed that sales would markedly outperform 2012. A further 29% thought that the festive period would be on a par with last year with not one respondent believing that Christmas sales would decline year-on-year.
Sarah Banfield, ICSC senior research analyst said: “The results of this poll are good news for year-end performance and also reflect a renewed optimism for the future of the European shopping-centre market in 2014 as European economies continue on their slow path to recovery.” Banfield further noted that, “Beyond the upcoming holiday season, the survey found that industry expectations for business activity over the next six months turned up markedly in October with the second-highest reading since the index began in March 2011.”
This latest outlook for the 2013 festive period compares favourably with industry sentiment at the same time last year when 56% of shopping centre executives were hopeful of only a slight improvement in seasonal performance on the previous year, almost a quarter of respondents anticipated that sales would be in line with Christmas 2011, and the same percentage expected the market to deteriorate.
