Staggering new figures reveal exactly how footfall in Harrogate town centre is doing for shops and bars
Stunning new data is revealing exactly how footfall in Harrogate town centre is performing in these challenging times.
The revelatory figures, which offer a granular picture of the shifting landscape retail and hospitality operates in, are the work of Harrogate Business Improvement District (BID) which uses the data to assess the impact of their efforts to support businesses.
Incredibly, footfall in the first half of 2024 in the BID area in Harrogate town centre stood at eight million-plus – a total of 8,045,803, to be precise.
Writing in his regular column for the Harrogate Advertiser, BID Manager Matthew Chapman explained that the collaboration with data firm HUQ covered 98% of the population, obtaining the data sets using a person’s mobile phone signal and location services via various apps.
"We use the data to not only evidence a return on investment for our members but to show the success of any celebration, trail or other event we organise,” said Mr Chapman.
"It also helps us to discover Harrogate’s hotspots and then use the data to plan locations of events to ensure they are in high footfall areas."
So detailed is the data that it can be broken down into categories including footfall, density, granular catchment, dwell time and demographics.
In the first half of 2024, the ‘hot spot’ areas of Harrogate for footfall have, rather less surprisingly, been Cambridge Crescent, Station Parade, Cambridge Street and James Street.
The figures show that people travelled from all over the UK to visit Harrogate, from Mold in Wales to Mossley in Northern Ireland.
The most frequent visitors to the BID area in 2024 so far have been people over the age of 60, with 33.4% within this age group.
Mr Chapman said: "This data provided by HUQ is fantastic for us when looking to target different audiences and areas.
"As a result, we can not only see where people often travel from but, also, locations we may need to try and work on to improve visitor numbers.”
Harrogate BID is a not-for-profit organisation, funded by businesses, dedicated to improving the area businesses trade within.