Shoppers descended on UK high streets and retail parks to buy last-minute gifts on Christmas Eve, boosting retailers amid a challenging consumer backdrop.<\/p>\n
More shoppers visited shops and retail destinations compared with a year ago, according to early data.<\/p>\n
Figures from retail technology specialists MRI Software showed footfall up to 1pm on Christmas Eve was up 2.4% compared with the same day a year earlier.<\/p>\n
This also represented a 20.5% jump against a week earlier, with many Britons leaving their shopping late.<\/p>\n
It said this was particularly driven by a large number of shoppers visiting retail parks for last-minute purchases.<\/p>\n
Retail park footfall rose 6.6% compared with a year earlier and was 36.3% higher week-on-week.<\/p>\n
Footfall was up on this time last year, figures showed (Jacob King\/PA) <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, footfall on high streets lifted by 1.1% year-on-year, and shopping centres reported a 1% increase.<\/p>\n
Jenni Matthews, retail analyst at MRI Software, told the Press Association: \u201cIt has been a tough year for retailers after they first felt the impact of last year\u2019s autumn budget, which led to increases in labour costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany are now expecting higher business rates next year too.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe footfall shows that people are still out and about, shopping in their towns and cities across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regional data showed that Wales saw a particular surge in last-minute shopping, with shopper traffic lifting by 7.9% year-on-year.<\/p>\n
Many shoppers also ventured into London to snap up presents, with it reporting a 2.6% increase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shoppers descended on UK high streets and retail parks to buy last-minute gifts on Christmas Eve, boosting retailers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,194965,164,200720,200722,200721,78124],"class_list":["post-371039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-christmas-eve","tag-economy","tag-mri-software","tag-retail-destinations","tag-retail-parks","tag-shoppers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}