Around Town

No, You Didn’t Imagine It: Foot Traffic & Visitors During The Holidays Was Up 14% Over Last Year

January 21, 2024 /

Rittenhouse was busier than ever this past holiday season.

Return-to-office demands are being ignored but coming here to visit and shop? That’s hot.

📸: Visit Philadelphia

This past holiday season foot traffic in just the Rittenhouse area where, according to the Center City District (CCD) blog, there are “338 high-end retailers” was up 14% over last year. It was also almost 3x more than 2020, but that was peak Covid-time so, in our opinion, it can’t be compared to “normal” times.

Some reasons we’re assuming why traffic was up, based on informal data, is the increased number of cool retail stores (Glossier, Free People, Lululemon, the always lovely Anthropologie, etc.) in proximity to popular restaurants like Parc, The Love, and more.

Other takeaways from the CCD report:

  • Center City as a whole had 50% more foot traffic – around 13M (Rittenhouse accounts for 23% of that traffic IF our math is correct as we’re not mathematicians!)
  • Dilworth Park also saw a ton of visitors, with a whopping 51% more traffic. There were more vendors and events which made it fun, so hoping to see more of that.

So when people complain about it being super busy in the neighborhood you can rest assured that they were not imagining it.

We’d make a prediction about this year’s holiday season seeing more traffic but we don’t want to jinx it.