Experian FootFall: lead up to royal wedding
Published: 04 May, 2011
According to Experian FootFall, in the week beginning 25th April, footfall increased very marginally week-on-week by +0.1 per cent. It did however drop by -4.0 per cent year-on-year.
There was a lot of activity last week with the Easter Bank Holiday Monday leading up to the royal wedding on Friday and the Bank Holiday weekend. Bank Holiday Monday saw footfall drop by -14.4 per cent year-on-year which was slightly better than the predicted value of -25.0 per cent, which is what we’ve seen over the past three years.
Tuesday was up by +15.2 per cent, Wednesday by +9.7 per cent and Thursday by +21.4 per cent, perhaps shoppers stocking up and getting prepared for Friday’s festivities. These three days showed very good year-on-year growth and indicate that many people would have taken the week off work.
The Royal Wedding Friday saw footfall fall by -33.0 per cent which was down over twice the predicted value of -16.0 per cent. The predicted footfall for the Friday was based on three years average of Good Friday’s, the closest base to measure upon, but it seems the attraction of this unique event repelled more people away from the shopping centres than thought.
The view was there may be a little bounce-back on Saturday but footfall remained down by -10.2 per cent and then was down by -11.1 per cent on Sunday. The warm weather continued last week and with such as short working day week, many people may have taken advantage of taking holiday which may well have contributed to the drop in footfall over the weekend.
Experian FootFall did predict footfall to drop by -3.7 per cent for the entire week and the actual drop was very close at -4.0 per cent, although the shift in behaviour differed a little day by day.
Northern Ireland saw footfall increase by +5.9 per cent year-on-year, with Yorkshire-Humber increasing by +2.2 per cent and the South East by +0.1 per cent. The North East fell by -10.1 per cent, London by -8.4 per cent, Eastern by -8.0 per cent, North West & Scotland by -6.3 per cent, East Midlands by -4.7 per cent, West Midlands by -2.9 per cent and the South West & Wales by -0.4 per cent.
The Retail Park Index increased by +0.3 per cent week-on-week but fell slightly year-on-year by -0.8 per cent. Clearly Retail Parks this week were not impacted as much as shopping centre’s with the mix of Bank Holiday Monday and Royal Wedding Friday.
