{"id":68183,"date":"2021-08-05T13:31:07","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T12:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/?p=68183"},"modified":"2021-08-06T09:42:57","modified_gmt":"2021-08-06T08:42:57","slug":"freedom-day-flop-hints-at-danger-of-long-term-damage-to-brick-and-mortar-retail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/freedom-day-flop-hints-at-danger-of-long-term-damage-to-brick-and-mortar-retail\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom Day flop hints at danger of long term damage to brick and mortar retail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Despite a temporary spike in activity in the 24 hours after Freedom Day, retail footfall has settled back at worse than 30% below 2019 levels for most destinations.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Footfall across the whole of July was weaker than in June, according to analysis by Springboard.<\/p>\n<p>Footfall declined from 2019 levels by 30.5% in high streets, 30.2% in shopping centres and 4.2% in retail parks.<\/p>\n<p>Footfall rose by 16.5% on July 19, dubbed Freedom Day, from the same day in the week before, but it dropped away so the week ended just 3% up.<\/p>\n<p>Springboard suggests footfall was impacted by incredibly hot weather in the week of Freedom Day followed by rain the following week and the pingdemic sending millions of people into isolation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Whilst there was a clear uplift in activity on Freedom Day, it was not sustained and dropped away to a very modest week on week increase that averaged around +1% on the following days of the month,&#8221; says Diane Wehrle, marketing &amp; insights director at Springboard.<\/p>\n<p>As the pandemic wanes, two long term trends remain. Tourists are staying away and fewer domestic customers are doing their shopping at brick and mortar stores.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The longer term impact of Covid on stores and destinations is becoming ever clearer as we track the vacancy rate each quarter. The latest survey has identified that a greater number of stores are shutting their doors permanently; the UK vacancy rate rose once again to 11.8% in July from 11.5% in April, when it had improved from 11.7% in January, and it is now at its highest level since April 2013,&#8221; reveals Ms Wehrle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite a temporary spike in activity in the 24 hours after Freedom Day, retail footfall has settled back at worse than 30% below 2019 levels for most destinations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":61358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false},"categories":[7024,2,8637],"tags":[3520,10195],"newspack_lstngs_evt":[],"newspack_lstngs_gen":[],"newspack_lstngs_mkt":[],"newspack_lstngs_plc":[],"acf":[],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"WATCHPRO","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68183"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_evt","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_evt?post=68183"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_gen","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_gen?post=68183"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_mkt","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_mkt?post=68183"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_lstngs_plc","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchpro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_lstngs_plc?post=68183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}