RETAIL experts MRI Springboard has just announced its latest footfall figures, insights and analysis for August 2023, which shows footfall across Scotland’s retail destinations.
Footfall performance in Scotland’s retail destinations confounded expectations in August, with a rise +3.8% from July. Figures rose from July across all three key destination types, which countered the result in July when footfall declined from June in both high streets and retail parks.
However, despite the robust performance the reining of consumer activity due to the higher cost of living crisis is evident in a smaller annual uplift, with weekends only seeing a +1.4% rise, when a far greater proportion of trips are leisure based, (compared to +4.4% Mon-Fri).
Highlights are as follows:
- Footfall across Scotland’s retail destinations rose by +3.8% over the month from July to August, versus just +0.2% over the month from June to July 2023.
- There was a month on month increase in footfall in high streets in August of +3.7%, +4.1% in shopping centres and +3.6% in retail parks.
- Weekday footfall rose by +4.4% from July, versus a rise of +1.4% over the weekend across all of Scotland’s retail destinations.
- In Scotland’s high streets, footfall was +5.4% higher than July during the weekday period but only +0.4% higher over the weekend. In shopping centres – where the offer is predominantly retail and leisure led – there was a greater rise in footfall over the weekend of +3.3% versus +2.4% between Monday and Friday.
- Footfall across all of Scotland’s retail destinations increased by +2.8% from August 2022, the smallest annual rise yet, and significantly less than in both July (+4.5% from July 2022) and June (+7.5% from June 2022).
- In Scotland’s high streets the annual uplift in August shrunk to +2.7% from +5.7% in July and +11.1% in June.
- The lower annual increase was reflected in the ongoing gap from the 2019 footfall level which in July and August reached -14% and -14.1% respectively, versus -11% in June.
The full report, authored by Diane Wehrle, Marketing & Insights Director, MRI, can be downloaded from: https://we.tl/t-H2yRkL5fFg
