Over 9m Britons leave Christmas shopping to 11th hour says Westfield

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Dec 20, 2017

There should be a late shopping surge in the next few days as Britons who’ve left their Christmas shopping until the 11th hour make up for lost time. Who says so? None other than Westfield. The shopping malls giant expects 9.12 million consumers to drive sales higher up to and including this Sunday.

And it said Wednesday that as many as 7.68 million shoppers should hit the stores on Christmas Eve, despite shorter opening hours as it’s a Sunday.

Additionally, in its visitor traffic prediction report, it also said that almost 13.5 million people have self-gifted in the run-up to Christmas, lured by the deep discounts that retailers have been offering.

So back with that prediction for visitor traffic, Westfield said that Scots are most likely (21%) to be late shoppers with those in the North East (20%) and London (19%) running them a close second and third.

The malls operator, which is soon to get even bigger after its planned takeover by Unibail-Rodamco, said that the timing of Christmas this year is likely to lead to a Super Saturday and Super Sunday boom and is expecting heavy traffic at its two London malls. A year ago it saw 600,000+ visitors to its London malls on the two Saturdays before Christmas.

Westfield UK and Europe’s marketing chief Myf Ryan said: “Typically at Christmas everyone in retail talks about Super Saturday. Last year the two pre-Christmas Saturdays were our busiest days.

"This year, shoppers have double the opportunity with a full weekend of shopping. We’re expecting to see one of our busiest shopping weekends of the year as people take advantage of Super Saturday and Sunday.”