New Visitor Data Shows Footfall In BID Town Centres Has Declined By 11%

Place Informatics, the provider of footfall and location visitor behaviour data monitoring in the UK, has published the UK BID Footfall Indices Report to highlight how your BID towns have been performing during 2022 compared to non-BID towns. According to the new report, in March 2022 when COVID-19 restrictions started to be removed, footfall in BID town centres was down 11% compared to 2019.

The extensive report went on to show that May 2022 delivered the strongest recovery against 2019 with a 10% decline. However, figures in July dropped to 12% which can be attributed in part to the extreme heatwave in the third week of the month, train strikes and potentially the impact of the cost-of-living crisis. The leading visitor data firm believes its August report will provide further indicators of how the ‘cost of living crisis is impacting town centre footfall.

Town centres and BIDS focus on footfall figures from 2019 as an important benchmark for the last full trading year. As the data shows, footfall in town centres was lower in 2022 compared to 2019 overall, due to the impact of changes to working and shopping patterns of behaviour.

Place Informatics uses mobility location data to calculate visitor behaviour patterns for over 2,300 town centres across the UK and all 260 Business Improvement District town centres. Location data includes footfall, visitor demographics, catchment and movement flows for all 260 BID areas.

Footfall itself is a useful tool to see how town centres, high streets and particular businesses are performing but understanding how these visitors are behaving and also which catchment areas they are visiting from could offer the vital information needed to truly change the fortunes of many town centres across the UK.

This data can help retailers, hospitality, councils and many other businesses and services understand how high street visitors are behaving, where they are attracting visitors from and most importantly what services they are utilising on their visit which may include green spaces and car parks.