• Swindon & Wiltshire News
• Thursday September 7 2023
• Author Name: Peter Davison

Retail spend and footfall up in Q2 – Bristol City Centre BID

Retail spend and footfall were up in Q2, according to new data released by Bristol City Centre BID.

Figures show visitors to Park Street were up by almost 40 per cent between April and June against the previous quarter.

The retail and leisure destination attracted 687,000 visitors – up 38.1 per cent on the previous period.

With Bristol University sitting at the top of the steep hill it was perhaps unsurprising that visitors were “predominantly” in the 18-34 demographic.

And, spending in the town centre’s bars and restaurants was up 14 per cent on January to March figures.

Spend in the city centre was up 19 per cent on the previous quarter at £131 million – far outstripping the national GDP growth for the period of 0.2 per cent.

The city also did well in attracting local spenders. Sixty per cent of customers in the period came from Bristol and South Gloucestershire and in June the figure was 77 per cent.

Meanwhile in Broadmead, whose BID relays its information differently, monthly footfall for August was 973,410 – down slightly on the month prior, and on August 2022, when footfall for the month nudged over the one million mark.

However, the number of visitors for the year to date (until the end of August) was 8,119,010 – up four per cent on the previous year.

Picture: Park Street by Enrique Íñiguez Rodríguez, published under Creative Commons licence