Understanding Visitor Behaviour and Catchment Areas is Key to High Street and Town Centre Regeneration

Place Informatics, the leading provider of footfall and location visitor behaviour data monitoring in the UK, believes that visitor behaviour insights are the key to regenerating town centres and high streets across the UK. Footfall itself is a useful tool to see how town centres, high streets and particular businesses are performing but understanding how these visitors are behaving and also which catchment areas they are visiting from could offer the vital information needed to truly change the fortunes of many town centres across the UK.

In May 2021 14% of all UK shops were empty, partly due to the impact of the pandemic and in response, the UK Government has laid out an unprecedented amount of financial support for Town Centres and High Streets. This support is allowing local authorities and businesses to press ahead with plans to reinvent and secure the future of these vital spaces. However, serious challenges still remain, and it is critical that these plans are made using detailed insights of visitor behaviour to ensure incentives, events and restructures have maximum impact and attract more of the right consumers to help revitalise high streets.

This data can help retailers, hospitality, councils and many other businesses and services understand how high street visitors are behaving, where they are attracting visitors from and most importantly what services they are utilising on their visit which may include green spaces and car parks.

Clive Hall, CEO of Place Informatics, commented, “It is great to see the government offering financial support to help regenerate our high streets as they are vital hubs for local communities across the UK. To date, footfall measurement has always been used as an indication of how town centres are performing over time but this data alone doesn’t give the true picture.

We offer local councils and businesses detailed insights to show how visitors are behaving when visiting town centres on a daily basis and also for regular or special events for the public. We can also provide details of the postcode area that visitors have travelled from, giving town centre managers and retailers the information needed to make informed choices and maximise the return from these.”

On Thursday 31st March The Transforming UK High Streets Conference and Exhibition is taking place in London as industry experts gather to debate and offer advice on this important topic. The Place Informatics team will be exhibiting, and CEO, Clive Hall will be speaking about ‘Using Visitor Location Data to help fill High Street Gaps’.