Surging cases of the Omicron variant have hit retail footfall and dampened any hopes of a sales surge on the last weekend before Christmas.

People wearing face masks walking down a street with market in the background

Central London, regional cities and UK high streets all suffered a slump in footfall over the last weekend before Christmas, according to the latest data from Springboard. 

Footfall in the capital fell 8.5% on the weekend, 6.4% in cities outside of London and 2.6% across all high streets in the UK, putting paid to the hopes of many retailers of a last-minute sales bump on the last weekend before Christmas. 

 

By days, footfall inched up 0.8% across all retail destinations on Saturday (December 18) but slumped 1.4% on Sunday. Across the last week, footfall peaked on Tuesday (December 14) where it was up 15.6% across all destinations but fell away to just 2.6% on Friday. 

Market towns saw a 3.4% increase in footfall across the weekend, while shopping centres enjoyed a 0.5% uptick, and retail parks continued their strong performance with a 4.7% jump. 

For the week, footfall was 19.1% lower than in 2019, but still 22.5% higher than in the same week in 2020.

Overall, footfall across UK retail destinations rose by 5.5% from the week before.

Shoppers still nervous about in-store visits

Springboard insights director Diane Wehrle said: “Despite the introduction of Plan B guidance to work from home and the significant rise in Covid infections, footfall rose last week across UK retail destinations. However, the growing nervousness of consumers meant that increases dwindled with each day that passed, and by Friday the uplift in footfall was around just a quarter of that on Wednesday.  

“This provided a forewarning for subdued performance of bricks and mortar stores and destinations over the weekend which, whilst regarded as the peak shopping weekend of the year, is exactly what occurred. Indeed on Saturday footfall increased only very marginally from the week before, and on Sunday it was lower than the week before.

“The nervousness of shoppers about making in-person shopping visits inevitably meant that large city centres lost out to smaller high streets, particularly over the weekend when footfall declined from the week before in Central London and large cities outside of the capital, whilst rising in market towns.”