Good weather boosts Easter high street footfall
New figures have shown that there was an increase in retail footfall over the bank holiday weekend compared to Easter last year.
The data from Springboard reveals that the number of visits to retail destinations rose by 6.5% on Friday, 1.2% on Saturday and 8.4% by 12pm on Easter Monday as high street retailers benefited from the warm weather.
Springboard found all of the increase on Friday and Saturday was due to an uplift in activity on the UK’s high streets where footfall rose by 19.1% on Good Friday and 8.8% on Easter Saturday.
In contrast, shopping centres and retail parks experienced a drop in footfall on both days.
Springboard insights director Diane Wehrle said: “Consumers clearly wanted to be outside enjoying the sun rather than visiting covered malls. Even in retail parks, where shoppers gravitate to buy garden furniture and plants, footfall declined by 2.4% on Good Friday and 1.3% on Easter Saturday from the same days last year.”
Shopping centres saw footfall drop by 11% on Good Friday and 11.8% on Easter Saturday.
With the warm weather continuing through to Easter Monday, by 12pm UK retail footfall was 8.4% higher than on the same day in 2018. Again, this was driven by high streets where footfall rose by 16.3% on the day. Meanwhile, footfall in retail parks was up 1.9%, although shopping centres experienced a drop of 1.4%.
Last Easter, bad weather led retail footfall to decline by 2.4% on Good Friday, 3% on Easter Saturday and 9.8% by 12pm on Easter Monday.
