Half-term Halloween treats retailers to a +17.7 percent boost to UK store footfall

• This year, Halloween coincided with both school half-term and the religious festival of Diwali, helping to further boost in-store shopper visits
• High Streets saw the biggest weekly rise in footfall ahead of Halloween, up +19.6 percent on the week prior

With Halloween coinciding with school half-term and the religious festival of Diwali this year, UK shoppers embraced spooky season, delivering a boost to in-store shopper traffic, the latest data from Sensormaic Solutions, the retail traffic consulting and analytics group from Johnson Controls, shows.

Data from Sensormatic platform, which captures over 40billion shopper visits globally each year, showed that total footfall on Halloween (31st Oct 2024) rose +17.7 percent year-on-year, with the biggest boost coming on Tue 29th Oct when shopper traffic rose +43.6 percent on the daily average for October. High Streets saw the greatest footfall gains, with visitor numbers in the seven days preceding Halloween rising +19.6 percent compared to the week prior (18 – 24 Oct vs 25 – 31st Oct 2024).

“UK shoppers have certainly got into the spirit of Halloween, a shopping event that grows in popularity every year,” Andy Sumpter, Sensormatic Solution’s EMEA Retail Consultant, commented.  “As more and more consumers take an increasingly American-style approach and really go to town on their spooky celebrations, spending now centres not just on costumes and confectionary, but increasingly on decorations and wider entertaining. This not only makes Halloween a key sales-driving opportunity for retailers, but also an increasingly important engagement platform to connect with customers ahead of the critical Black Friday and Christmas trading periods.”

As well as increasing consumer adoption, footfall performance on Halloween 2024 also benefitted from the event coinciding with school half-term, which landed a week earlier last year (week 43 in 2023 vs week 44 this year), prompting families to combine spooky celebrations with school holiday entertainment.

The date of Halloween this year also coincided with Diwali (31st Oct – 1st Nov 2024), the Festival of Lights. This may have also prompted store visits as consumer stocked up ahead of Diwali festivities.

Image courtesy of Pexels. Photo credit: Olia Danilevich.