Largest European inventory of retail properties and footfall in a single month
In September 2021 the largest European Locatus ‘operation’ ever took place. Activities that are normally spread over an entire year, now had to be saved up due to COVID-19. But this month we are going to go all the way.
In one month we will inventory and update the retail
- in the centres of 34 European cities
- spread across 19 countries
- approximately 26,000 retail properties in total
- from 225 different sectors
- and around 4,747 different retail chains.
In the same month we also count the footfall
- in the centres of these 34 European cities
- spread across 1,608 individual counting points.
Covid-19 has left no European city untouched. In the Netherlands and Belgium, we saw that the footfall numbers decreased drastically, and we are still not back at the old levels. Especially the large inner cities are having a hard time. Cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht are suffering from the increase of internet purchases and avoiding the crowds. On top of that, they are also missing tourists. This will certainly also be the case in the other major European cities. But to what extent?
Locatus will investigate this for you (and also for a large-scale study by BNP Paribas).
If fewer visitors come to the stores, this will also indirectly influence the vacancy rate. At least, one would expect so. However, the nationwide the vacancy rate has remained almost the same in the Netherlands (it even slightly decreased in recent months). But the large city centres are having a hard time. We saw the vacancy rate in the Dutch city centres rise from 7.9% at the beginning of 2021 to 8.3% in August (also read the blog about the paradox of retail vacancy in coronation time).
What is the situation in the main European shopping streets?
We will also investigate this in September!
