Avison Young‘s latest Vitality Index reveals that in-person retail traffic has rebounded substantially in Canada from 2020.
Craig Leibowitz, Executive Director, Innovation and Insight Advisory, U.S. with the commercial real estate firm, said the Index is unique because it uses cell phone mobility data to measure visitor volumes across different unique retail experiences whether they’re in-person or online.
“What was really quite fascinating to me just looking at the data itself is a few things. One is the rebound in in-person shopping experiences across North America,” said Leibowitz.
Ali Fieder, Sales Representative, Vice President, Retail Sales & Leasing for Avison Young, said lockdowns in Canada did play a role in 2020 with decreased traffic.
“With that said, what my clients are saying, what I’m seeing because I work on both the landlord and tenant side of things, in general there is a big push for people wanting to leave the house, people wanting to get out of the house, they want to go shop, they want to experience, they want to touch and feel the product again,” she said. “Obviously on the hospitality side of things people want to get out and eat at restaurants. Obviously following health and public safety measures, everyone feels the urge and the need to get out which has been a great thing for the retail market to date.
“Holiday shopping is up and it continues to stay up as we saw in the Vitality Index and there’s maybe a bit of an overall renaissance with retail in Canada which has been really positive to see. We were able to see it qualitatively but now we’re actually able to quantify it with the data that Craig put together.”
The Vitality Index found:
- In Canada, foot traffic on Black Friday jumped 86 per cent in retail corridors and 90 per cent in shopping centres over 2020 – but important to note that this volume remains behind 2019 pre-pandemic levels;
- In Canada, for the week of December 5 versus week of Cyber Monday 2020: foot traffic was up 62 per cent for local, up 56 per cent for retail corridor, and up 73 per cent for shopping centres. (For example: in overall experiences, foot traffic is up 53 per cent in Calgary and 70 per cent in Edmonton); and
- There was an explosion of online shopping throughout the pandemic, jumping 45 per cent since the fall of 2019, although latest visitor volumes at last-mile distribution centres (a useful proxy for e-commerce) show current declines from 2020 and 2019 levels, with tighter labour markets and supply chain challenges serving as contributing factors.
“There’s a tremendous amount of upward momentum as it relates to spending levels this year compared to last year where there are trillions of dollars of savings that people (in North America) have just been holding onto and depending on who you ask or what you read, there are different variables that play and a different extent to which there is that much spending power in the current environment,” said Leibowitz.
Fieder said it’s too early to know what the impact of the spread of the Omicron variant will have on the shopping experience.
“I think Canadians in general have been really receptive to the public health measures so I think it really just depends on what our government gives us guidance in,” she said.
Fieder said prior to COVID a big theme in the retail industry was how e-commerce was going to impact in-store shopping.
“The pandemic accelerated retailers’ plans to innovate. So what might have been a traditional retail store, maybe now they’ve done something different to bring people in . . . Some sort of experience to drive traffic into the store front. I think as challenging as the pandemic has been. It also created an opportunity for retailers to really rethink what they’re doing from an in-store experience standpoint which has added some excitement to the retail environment,” she said.
The Vitality Index can be found here: https://www.avisonyoung.com/retail-vitality-index
