London retailers’s slow recovery

Following the devastating bombings last Thursday in London, retail sales had declined much less than expected over the weekend. Although the city’s retailers are still suffering the after-effects, many Londoners were determined to return to their normal routines and headed for the shops.

SPSL, the shopping tracking agency, found that trade had improved since the attacks on Thursday, when non-food retailers in Central London suffered a 74 per cent year-on-year decline in shoppers. The weekend showed a recovery, with numbers down by 26 per cent on Friday, by 21 per cent on Saturday and by 28 per cent on Sunday.

Tim Senison, director of knowlegde management at SPSL, told the FT that the agency had expected the results to be a great deal worse. “We underestimated the resilience of Londoners,” he said. Department store John Lewis revealed that Saturday had proven to be a better day for the retailer than expected. “Our sales were better than we expected, considering the circumstances, although they were not normal trade for a Saturday,” it said.

“After September 11, shopper numbers returned to previous levels within two weeks, so we would hope and expect a similar scenario to occur again,” said the British Retial Consortium. “If tourists stay away from London, then we would expect the impact of the attacks to be more long-term,” it added. The BRC predicted retail losses of about £26 million from Thursday to Monday.

The World Travel Tourism Council called a crisis committee meeing, which met in London on Friday. It ammended its initial forecast of 31 million visitors arrivals to the UK this year by 2 per cent less.

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