Issue Brief: Holiday Shopping Trends in Southwest Florida

February 28, 2025 / RERI Research Team

The holiday shopping season is a critical period for retailers and local economies, often serving as a barometer for overall economic health and consumer confidence. Regions like Southwest Florida can be more prone to the effect of this season, as the area caters to snowbirds and other seasonal residents from across the world. Understanding the trends and patterns of previous years becomes valuable for businesses, policymakers, and consumers alike.

In this issue brief, we provide an in-depth look into the holiday shopping season for Southwest Florida. The data for this issue brief comes from Placer.ai, a location intelligence and analytics platform that provides insights into consumer behavior and market trends. Placer.ai uses mobile device data to better understand consumer patterns, providing valuable insights for key stakeholders in the region. We define the “pre-holiday season” as the months between January and October, while the “holiday season” is defined as November and December. This definition of holiday season captures both traffic that occur as a result from Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas and New Year shopping. We use the International Council of Shopping Center’s (ICSC) Classification and Characteristics to define the various types of shopping centers.

We find that Southwest Florida ranked 6th out of 21 workforce regions in terms of the overall percentage increase in holiday visitors during the 2024 holiday season, with a 10.1 percent increase compared to the pre-holiday season. We also find that Covid-19 played a role in exacerbating this increase in 2020, but it has largely returned to pre-pandemic levels since then. Finally, we observe that community shopping centers, which offer general merchandise and other convenience-oriented services, tend to see the largest bump in foot traffic during the holiday season, accounting for approximately 41.7 percent of the total increase in holiday shopping in Southwest Florida.

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Issue Brief: Holiday Shopping Trends in Southwest Florida

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