One key part of London’s West End saw big uplift in visitors during December with new figures from the Heart of London Business Alliance (HOLBA) saying footfall was up 19% year on year last month.
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The area HOLBA covers includes Piccadilly, Leicester Square and Haymarket, which don’t account for the main shopping district but are just a stone’s throw from Regent Street, Bond Street and Covent Garden.
HOLBA’s figures also show that dwell time increased by 42 minutes per day compared to a year ago.
Overall, footfall was 20% above the average seem from 2022-24, and between 15 and 29 December, visits were up 35%, all of which HOLBA said underlines the area’s recovery from the pandemic.
Deputy chief executive, Mark Williams, said the figures “show that London’s West End continues to outperform national trends, with visitor numbers on the rise. This underscores its appeal as a global destination and the power of the experience economy in attracting people to the area”.
The New West End Company (NWEC), which represents businesses across the wider West End, hasn’t yet released its own figures for December. But it had earlier said that the area bucked the national trend over the Black Friday period. West End footfall was up 9% in the previous week, up 4.1% in Black Friday week itself and 6.2% the week after.
That further underlines how well the West End has bounced back after several years in which its status as one of Europe’s top tourist shopping districts was at risk. From 2020 onwards, the large number of store closures, the proliferation of so-called American candy stores and the (still-ongoing) absence of tax-free shopping for tourists meant central London was slow to recover. ‘Rival’ shopping cities such as Paris and Milan meanwhile have taken less time to get back to pre-pandemic footfall levels and London Mayor Sadiq Khan this week revealed that he’s lobbied the government to get the decision on cancelling the tax-free shopping perk reversed.
