Great events and weather see Preston's visitor numbers increase

Maybe it’s Preston’s evergrowing offering of nice shops, and places to eat and drink.

Maybe it’s the revamped Preston Markets.

Either way, Preston city centre has been outperforming the regional and national picture in terms of visitors.

Footfall in the city centre is monitored regularly by two cameras and then analysed.

The cameras and software is funded by the Preston Business Improvement District and supplied by Springboard.

In June, the figures now being poured over have been surprising.

A snapshot of the results shows that the number of visitors for the week commencing June 4 was a superb 148,492.

And for the week commencing June 18, it was up 6.3 per cent compared with the same week last year.

In that same week, North Yorkshire footfall was up by just 1.3 per cent (-2.7 per cent year on year).

In the UK overall it was also up just 1.8 per cent.

Preston BID manager Mark Whittle said: “Our recent surveys have shown that Preston is destination of choice for shopping and for leisure time, for people across Lancashire.

“The general public survey we conduct annually shows that people from outside of the city proactively choose to visit our city centre because the offer here outweighs their locality.

“With the great weather, events at key weekends and the holidays, it’s all worked in our favour seeing Preston beating the regional and national trends recently.”