Across the two quarters, the total in premises Visa spend is £131.1 million in Q1 and £142.7million in Q2, representing a 9% rise from one quarter to the next and a significant increase of 16% when comparing it to the same trading period in 2021.

The Visa spend data is sourced from companies such as Virgin Media O2 and Visa, giving a comprehensive, yet privacy-focused understanding of how many people are visiting the city, their age groups, origin postcodes of visitors and their spend in the city centre. It allows analysis of different merchant category groups for each quarter and then comparison for each, quarter by quarter.

The research shows that online Visa spend in businesses across BS1, BS2 and BS8, benefited from an online sales of £161million in Q1 of this year, and a further £146million in Q2, a total of £307million for the first half of the year. There was a decrease of 10% between the two quarters, however in correlation with the increase of in premises spend, this shows the movement of consumers choosing to shop in store rather than online.

International spend is also having a huge impact on Bristol’s city centre economy and recovery, a total of £53.4million across the first six months of the year, with visitors from USA accounting for the highest international spend in the city.

The night-time economy sector (businesses operating between 6pm and 6am) has seen a significant boost across the first half of 2022 with a total spend of £39.5million across the six months. The night-time economy experienced a very positive start to the year with £19million spend in Q1, with a key driver for this increase being the return of Bristol Light Festival, which brought an additional £3.4m revenue to city centre businesses and 170,000 visitors to the event across its duration.

In Q2, restaurants, bars and clubs experienced an 8% increase in spend as a whole, with £20.5million spend reported specifically in the city centre between 6pm and 6am.