Paris may overtake London’s West End as Europe’s largest retail destination in the next five years as UK shoppers are drawn away from the capital by new developments and out-of-town centers, a new report showed.
It’s “more than possible” consumers will spend more in the French capital by 2013 than they do in the London district, Jonathan de Mello, director of retail property consultancy at Dublin-based Experian Group Ltd, said in a telephone interview. Spending in Paris this year will be 5.87 billion euros (US$7.46 billion), less than the 6.17 billion euros spent in the West End, Experian said yesterday in an e-mailed report.
“Paris is not too far behind and it doesn’t take too much for the West End to lose its position,” de Mello said, citing planned developments at Stratford City to the east of London and Elephant & Castle to the south, along with plans to extend the Brent Cross shopping mall to the north of the capital.
Westfield Group opened London’s largest shopping mall last month, bringing to four the total number of regional shopping centers in the city, with a population of 7.5 million.
The West End will lose 9 percent of spending to competitors next year, Mello predicts. The shopping district extending around Oxford Street and Regent Street has 620 stores spread over 6.4km, making it one of the largest retail areas in the world. It attracts 200 million shoppers a year.
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