Black Friday boosts retail footfall in UK retail destinations

The Black Friday effect saw footfall rise +4.8% last week across all UK retail destinations, which followed directly on from a rise of +5.9% in the week before.

Not only is this the first time since late August that footfall has increased in two consecutive weeks, but the average over the two weeks of +5.4% is higher than the average of +3.2% over the two weeks in late August, according to the latest data from retail experts Springboard.

Footfall on Black Friday, 27 November, rose by +8.7% - more than four times the +2% rise on Thursday 26 November, and one and a half times the average rise of +5% over the five days since Sunday 22 November.

The data suggests that Black Friday drove footfall up despite the severe COVID-19 restrictions in place across most of the UK, as Lockdown 2 drags on and non-essential retail remains closed until 2 December.

The greatest footfall rises from the previous week were in UK high streets at +6.6% and in retail parks at +4.9%, while footfall only rose by +1% in shopping centres.

Diane Wehrle, Insights Director at Springboard, said: “Footfall activity in UK retail destinations last week was clearly influenced by Black Friday, despite severe COVID-19 restrictions across the majority of the UK, which rendered it even more online focused than in previous years.

“For the first time since the last week of the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme and the bank holiday in late August, footfall in UK retail destinations rose for the second consecutive week from the week before. In addition, the increase in footfall on Friday was nearly double the average increase over the previous five days.”

All UK destinations were impacted heavily by the introduction of Tier 4 restrictions across much of Scotland which led to a drop in footfall in Scotland of -19.6% from the week before, but the impact was most heavily felt in UK shopping centres as footfall plummeted in shopping centres in Scotland by -29.7%.

In contrast footfall in shopping centres in England rose by +7.6%, by +8.6% in shopping centres in Wales and +4.9% in shopping centres in Northern Ireland.

Despite the increase in footfall from the week before, footfall remains -56.9% below the 2019 level across all UK destinations.