Retailers in shopping centres are telling me that traffic this week before Christmas is down in the last two years. Click and collect sales are good as has been online for the last couple of months.
They put it down to people avoiding shopping places where there are likely to be large groups of people.
Not that they would release it but it would be good to get shopper traffic data from all shopping malls in Australia for the last two weeks for the last three years. If what I am hearing holds up, we’d see some centres down considerably, others steady and some even up.
A couple of NSW retailers I have spoken with say customers have contacted them to cancel LayBy collection saying they are too concerned about the virus. In each case they said in-store traffic is down 20% on 2019, the opposite of what they had seen through October and November, pre Omicron.
In my own situation, I have two businesses in major centres. One us up, way up, while the other is flat over the counter in-store but click and collect has surged. That second store has the centre’s Santa photo display out the front and it’s not booked out, not at all. That’s the best indicator of the challenge I am writing about.
On the high street we’re seeing a number Christmas, which is wonderful.
While I get push for personal responsibility, that is harder to plan for than government mandates controls, which are easier to plan for.