The latest statistics from the Ipsos Retail Traffic Index reveal that the retail industry in the UK is still struggling to return to normalcy. In the week leading up to March 13th, footfall in non-food retail stores saw a significant decline of 18.8% compared to the same week in 2019. However, there was a slight improvement of 1.2% compared to the previous week.
City centers are facing the most significant challenges, with towns outperforming cities by 5.9 percentage points. Despite a 2.4% growth from the previous week, cities experienced a drastic decline of 23.5% compared to the pre-pandemic period.
In contrast, retail parks have performed relatively better than other types of destinations when directly compared to the pre-Covid era. Although they witnessed a week-on-week drop, retail parks only had a pre-pandemic deficit of 13.4%. However, they did experience a slight decrease of 0.7% compared to the previous week. High streets, on the other hand, saw a decline of 21.4% with a modest increase of 1.8% on the same basis. Shopping centers also suffered a decline of 21.7% but saw a slight increase of 1%.
These figures offer valuable insights as they specifically focus on non-food footfall, providing an accurate representation of the number of shoppers entering stores rather than simply measuring general visitors to broader destinations.
Additional links:
– Retail Gazette: Retail footfall still 18.8% down compared to 2019
– Ipsos Retail Traffic Index
