Oxford City Centre Footfall data
Case reference FOI2024/00430
Published 7 May 2024
Request
Hello, Following good news that Oxford city centre's footfall has increased and bucked national trends, challenges have been apparent on social media that 'it's only tourists' and 'no one local shops in Oxford'. I note that in your press release dated 11 December - link here https://www.oxford.gov.uk/news/article/1010/oxford-city-centre-continues-to-buck-national-footfall-trends-in-the-run-up-to-christmas the press release stated that almost half of visitors are from Oxfordshire postcodes, which indicates there might be data available that could help assess this claim. Accordingly, please could you provide any data you have on sources of footfall to the city centre. Ideally this would be monthly data for 2022 2023 and 2024 to date providing the % of shoppers from OX postcodes and those not from OX postcodes which would enable analysis of change over time (post covid), and also assessment of the current status quo charge that 'visitors are only tourists'. Many thanks in advance for your time on this.
Response
This information is provided by our footfall supplier on a quarterly basis from beginning of 2023.
Please note that they assess visitor numbers from the UK only, as we don't have access to overseas postcodes. So this postcode data refers to UK visitors.Our statistics for this data only goes back to January 2023.Additionally, we don't have monthly data ; we have quarterly data - supplied below.
2023 Q1 44.4% of UK visitors were from Oxford postcodes/ OX postcodes.
2023 Q2 49% of UK visitors were from Oxford.
2023 Q3 48.7% of UK visitors were from Oxford postcodes/ OX postcodes.
2023 Q4 48.7% of UK visitors were from Oxford postcodes/ OX postcodes.
2024 Q1 50.8% of UK visitors were from Oxford.
Unfortunately, it is not currently possible to get this data for anyone visiting beyond the UK, as the current technology isn't refined across the world to gather this.
Documents
This is Oxford City Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
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