Saturday 30th October sees city centre footfall match pre-pandemic figures
Manchester’s annual Halloween festival, Halloween in the City, proved to be a success over the weekend with thousands of families flocking into the city centre, despite the weather, to enjoy the city’s biggest celebrations to date.
Footfall across the city’s retail core soared by an additional 150,000 visitors, an uplift of 30% on the previous week’s numbers, with footfall figures on Saturday 30th October in the city equivalent to the same half-term Saturday in 2019.
Visitors to the city clearly revelled in the eerie activities cooked up by Manchester Business Improvement District, with October proving to be the best month for city centre footfall since reopening, when compared to pre-Covid 2019 data.
The city saw the return of the popular collection of giant inflatable monsters created by artists Filthy Luker and Pedro Estrellas (Designs in Air), which invaded rooftops and buildings across the city including Manchester Arndale, Selfridges Exchange Square, Printworks, Cathedral Gardens Ice Rink, The Royal Exchange Manchester, Spinningfields, Great Northern, 111 Piccadilly and Kampus.
The monster Halloween party which hit the city’s streets, also included a Monster Procession – a roaming performance of monster puppets and stilt walkers from Walk the Plank, inspired by Filthy Luker’s monster designs.
Other activity included a mad scientist’s exploded castle and pop-up lab, fairground fun at the Carnival of Monsters, spooky specials from CBeebies and CBBC and a monstrous photo trail across the city centre.
Jane Sharrocks, Manchester BID Chair and General Manager of Selfridges Exchange Square said: “In spite of the challenging weather conditions, Halloween in the City once again proved to be an enormous success, with Manchester BID’s combination of monstrous events and mind-boggling activations across the city incentivising visitors in their thousands to come into Manchester.
The last week in October was the best week in terms of footfall vs 2019 since the reopening of retail in April, which is incredibly encouraging for retailers and local bars and restaurants and a great indication of people’s desire to return to the city centre.”
For more media information please contact Anoushka or Kat at ECHO on 07732 846650 or email anoushka@echo-pr.co.uk / kat@echo-pr.co.uk
Image C: Anthony Devlin/PA
