The post-pandemic surge in traffic at downtown stores is cooling off.
That’s the sobering assessment from MRI Springboard, which on Wednesday reported that downtown shopper traffic across the U.S. rose just 0.8 percent in June 2023 compared to June 2022. That’s a far cry from the 7.5 percent jump in traffic seen in May 2023 compared to May 2022, and the 7.3 percent annual increase seen in the three months from March to May 2023.
“All indicators point to a slowing in the recovery of downtown traffic, driven by the increasing maturity of hybrid working, combined with less growth at the weekend,” Diane Wehrle, marketing and insights director for Springboard, wrote in the report.
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The bottom line is that brick-and-mortar store traffic may never return to pre-pandemic levels, primarily due to the mass adoption of hybrid work schedules where employees only need to work in their offices two or three days a week, and can work from home on the other days. Urban quality-of-life conditions are another factor, with crimes in subways, stores and on the streets escalating, discouraging people from going out.
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“Hybrid working demonstrates that we must accept a new baseline for downtown traffic that is noticeably lower than the pre-pandemic level,” Wehrle wrote.
Weekday traffic in June was down 5.5 percent from June 2022. In May, traffic was up 0.4 percent from a year ago.
June 2023 downtown traffic was 24.5 percent below June 2019.
In New York City alone, Springboard cited a “stubbornly” wide gap in store traffic from pre-pandemic to post-pandemic levels, indicating that shopper traffic in June 2023 was 28.2 percent lower than June 2019. For the five months before June 2023, New York City traffic was down an average of 25.5 percent compared to the corresponding 2019 period.
Springboard uses technology to track shopper traffic in stores and provides the data to retailers and brands to help them analyze and cater better to consumers.
While Springboard reported on cooling downtown store traffic, Placer.ai is reporting an uptick in shopper traffic in malls and outlet centers.
“Following a rocky start to 2023, the latest mall foot traffic data suggests that a retail recovery is taking place,” Placer.ai reported. “After four straight months of year-over-year visit declines, indoor malls, open-air lifestyle centers and outlet malls all saw their year-over-year visits rebound significantly in June 2023. Traffic to indoor malls was on par with June 2022 levels, while open-air lifestyle centers and outlet malls received year-over-year visit bumps of 2.6 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively.”
Placer.ai analyzes data from 100 “top-tier” indoor malls, 100 open-air lifestyle centers and 100 outlet malls across the country, in urban and suburban areas. Placer.ai uses de-identified location information from a panel of tens of millions of devices and processes the data using AI and machine-learning capabilities to estimate visits to specific locations.
Springboard says it uses AI-driven technology and records more than 600 million pedestrian traffic counts per week at 6,637 counting points in 3,350 shopping locations. The data is collected in the U.S. and the U.K.