Westfield London, the UK’s number one shopping centre has reported a double-digit footfall surge for the first four weeks of November, totaling a 10.7% increase year on year.
The past weekend’s four-day Christmas shopping event also saw a 9.7% customer increase compared to last year.
Retailers reported strong trade over the Christmas shopping weekend and heralded winter coats and party dresses the most popular selling items as shoppers prepared for the seasonal festivities.
Westfield London’s unique luxury shopping precinct, The Village which houses over 40 luxury retailers, also reported a strong weekend with over 500 designer bags sold and close to 2,000 glasses of Champagne served at Searcys Champagne Bar.
The centre’s food and leisure precincts featuring over 50 places to dine have also reported strong results with over 24,000 covers and over 3,000 shoppers have already secured their tickets for the ice rink. VUE Cinema recently broke all previous records for the highest grossing cinema in UK history with the opening week of Skyfall.
Bill Giouroukos, Westfield’s Director of Operations, said: “The Games presented Westfield and its retailers with extraordinary global exposure. We have worked meticulously to ensure our centres continue to experience solid uplift and we are anticipating a busy Christmas period.”
“Leisure is a key driver of footfall and we have worked hard to create the ultimate Christmas shopping experience with ice rinks, Santa’s Grottos and world class events including the Taylor Swift Christmas light switch on at Westfield London that attracted over 10,000 shoppers.
Westfield London also offers exceptional customer services including valet parking, handsfree shopping and the Westfield gift card to help make this Christmas stress-free.”
Jane Shepherdson, CEO of Whistles, said: “Our Westfield store is trading well above last year, in line with the double digit like for like sales growth across the business. Key product lines that have supported this success include cashmere hoodies and tracksuit bottoms, our Limited Edition occasion wear and luxury leather products. In particular leather trousers and skirts, as well as traditional winter outerwear that we are known for.”
Alison Vickers – YO! Sushi’s Business Development Director said, “YO! Sushi is a very popular dining option in Westfield London, in the last four weeks we have had over 12,000 customers dine in with us and served them over 50,000 plates of food. If each of these plates were placed next to each other they would spread around 19 Olympic running tracks or stretch along 75 football pitches! Our new Winter Ramen Menu has also been a big success here with hungry Christmas shoppers looking for something to fill them up and keep them warm during this colder weather.”
A Vue Spokesperson said: “The success of Skyfall this November was phenomenal and saw the state-of-the-art Vue Westfield London become the highest grossing cinema ever in the UK, with weekly sales of almost £600,000.
“We pride ourselves on offering the best possible viewing experience for our customers and Vue Westfield does just that, with market leading Sony 4K digital projectors, luxurious VIP and stadium seating and VueXtreme screenings – featuring gigantic screens with incredible sound and vision quality.”
Paschalis Loucaides, Head of Marketing at Carluccio’s, added: “The unique combination of restaurant, food shop and deli that Carluccio’s offers works really well at a busy shopping centre, such as Westfield London. The restaurant is receiving a lot of extra footfall as we enter the festive season, and we expect to see our carefully selected Christmas product range do really well.”
The Westfield Group is an internally managed, vertically integrated, shopping centre group undertaking ownership, development, design, construction, funds/asset management, property management, leasing and marketing activities and employing approximately 4,000 staff worldwide. The Westfield Group has interests in and operates one of the world’s largest shopping centre portfolios with investment interests in 105 shopping centres across Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Brazil, encompassing approximately 22,964 retailers in 9.6 million square metres of retail space and total assets under management of £40bn.
Source: Company’s Press Release