European tourists give the North a huge boost

Dec 14 2009 by Amy Hunt, The Journal

Shoppers setting new records

MORE Christmas shoppers are flocking to stores than this time last year according to high street research.

Capital Shopping Centres (CSC), which owns 14 malls in the UK, including Gateshead’s MetroCentre and Eldon Square in Newcastle, said it was seeing more trade than this time last year, in spite of the recession.

The number of people visiting the centres was up 3% from last year, said CSC bosses, with more than seven million shoppers in the past week alone.

CSC commercial director Trevor Pereira said: “The pace of shopping is steady across the whole of the UK, and as ever, we expect late surges before Christmas.”

The weekend just gone was expected to be one of the busiest in the retail year.

Department store John Lewis revealed it had set a new all-time weekly sales record. The retailer saw sales of £110m in the period to Saturday, smashing the record achieved in the previous week.

Overall, sales were more than 8% up on John Lewis’s previous seven-day record, set in 2007.