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Oh baby! The competition for ownership of the baby retail space has once again intensified. Target recently announced the debut of its new “Baby Boutique” concept, which launched online on March 15th and is expected to roll out to 200 locations this year. The updated format greatly expands Target’s assortment of brands and baby items, including the debut of beloved and upscale baby brands like Uppababy, Doona, Bugaboo and Stokke, which previously hadn’t been sold at the retailer. Target’s strategy appears to be aimed at courting and retaining new and expectant parents who are looking for a one-stop shopping experience for baby products, whether in hardlines or softlines.
The baby category, in particular, has presented a white space opportunity for retailers across the country since the closure of buybuy Baby in 2023. Since then, Kohl’s launched a shop-in-shop concept with Babies”R”Us and buybuy Baby had a small but unsuccessful relaunch after being sold. That has left consumers with fractured options, including e-commerce only, department stores, mass merchants and local boutiques. Target’s push could propel it into the national leader role for the category, and also help the brand to revitalize itself after a challenging 2025 performance.
Looking at some of the insights behind this new pivot, it’s clear that Target is hoping to capture the attention of shoppers who would have normally shopped at the former buybuy Baby. According to Placer.ai’s foot traffic combined with Personalive consumer segmentation, Target’s shopper profile looks very similar to that of buybuy Baby during its operation. Specifically, the share of visits by Wealthy Suburban Families, Near Urban Diverse Families and Ultra Wealthy Families are all very closely aligned between the two chains, indicating that Target’s strategy could easily entrench itself with today’s consumer.
Despite the battle for national attention, there have also been innovations on a smaller scale in baby products. Babylist, a popular digitally native registry service, opened its first brick and mortar location in Beverly Hills in 2023, bringing the showroom experience to life for shoppers who want to test and learn before committing to baby gear. Baby items, particularly in hardlines like car seats and strollers, tend to be large ticket items, and many parents still want that tactile experience while shopping.
According to Placer’s foot traffic insights, the location has been successful in attracting the right customer base. The store allows shoppers to gain product knowledge and compare brands and models by category, making it easier to plan an online baby registry more effectively. Traffic has grown over the last year to the showroom, and the store's audience over-indexes for Ultra Wealthy Families, which both could drive conversion to the online marketplace.
Another group that has a high share of visits are Sunset Boomers, which would account for potential new grandparents. Grandparents are a vital shopper base for baby retailers, as they have higher levels of disposable income and are often purchasing gifts for others. Target could benefit from the buy-in of this group as it continues its journey into the world of baby-focused retail.
For more data-driven retail insights, visit placer.ai/anchor.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
The Men’s Final Four tips off this week in Indianapolis, IN, with UConn, Illinois, Arizona, and Michigan all vying for the title. While much of the attention will center on the action inside Lucas Oil Stadium, the experience extends far beyond the court, with a series of events unfolding across downtown. To better understand the impact of this multi-day spectacle, we looked back at last year’s Final Four in San Antonio, TX – examining the moments that drove meaningful consumer engagement and what they could signal for this year’s conclusion to March Madness.
Much like this year’s Final Four in Indianapolis, IN, the 2025 event in San Antonio, TX was spread over several days and multiple downtown locations. The Alamodome hosted the semifinals and national championship, while Fan Fest – a hub for sponsor activations, presentations, and interactive experiences – took place at the nearby Henry B. González Convention Center. Just outside, in Hemisfair’s Tower Park and Civic Park, free concerts, watch parties, giveaways, and games captured fan engagement beyond the arena.
AI-powered analysis of the 2025 Final Four revealed that fans attending a semifinal or national championship game were likely to have a higher household income (HHI) than visitors to other Final Four events – a trend consistent with the premium ticket prices associated with a national tournament. The free or low-cost admission to Fan Fest, Tip-Off Tailgate, and the Music Festival, on the other hand, meant that visitors to the convention center and Hemisfair were more likely to have a household income aligned with state and nationwide benchmarks.
This underscores the importance of layered engagement during a high-profile sporting event. Not every fan will splurge on game tickets, but a diverse mix of accessible experiences allows a broader audience to participate. By investing in these touchpoints, organizers expand the event’s reach and amplify its overall impact.
A deeper dive into the 2025 Final Four highlights how each venue attracted a distinct audience segment – working together to create a more complete, destination-worthy experience for a wide range of fans.
Trade area analysis underscores the differences between the events at each venue. The games at the Alamodome drew a significant share of out-of-town visitors, with more than half traveling over 250 miles. Fan Fest at the convention center skewed far more local, with nearly 70% of visitors coming from within 100 miles.
Meanwhile, music and tailgate events at Hemisfair struck a balance between the two. The venue’s proximity to the stadium, combined with a lineup of high-profile artists, likely made it a natural stop for traveling fans already in town for the games. At the same time, the open-air activities appear to have resonated with local audiences, many of whom may have paired their visit with the nearby Fan Fest at the convention center.
First, this year's Fan Fest and Tip-Off Tailgate in Indianapolis may possess an even stronger local skew than last year's. The addition of the Division II and Division III championships alongside the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) at nearby Gainbridge Fieldhouse introduces more budget-friendly viewing options – a factor that may attract even more local fans. This shift may benefit certain sponsor activations while limiting the reach of others, depending on their target audience.
Second, headline concerts can serve as a powerful draw for out-of-town visitors. And when scheduled before the games, these performances may encourage longer stays – as visitors who travel from afar are likely to remain through the championship game – providing a more sustained hotel and tourism lift across the full event window.
Taken together, these findings reinforce the importance of a multi-layered event strategy. By offering varied experiences that appeal to different audiences, organizers can maximize engagement and elevate the overall impact of a high-profile sporting showcase like the Final Four.
A closer look at the Hemisfair district – home to the Final Four’s Music Festival and Tip-Off Tailgate in 2025 – further highlights the potential of these events to drive local consumer engagement.
Relative to the 2025 daily visit average, traffic during the 2025 Final Four weekend (most notably, April 4th to 6th) ranked as the second-busiest stretch of the year for Hemisfair – surpassed only by the Saturday of Muertos Fest on October 25th.
This visit spike underscores the outsized role of ancillary programming in driving visitation – an effect that can be expected from the 2026 Final Four events as well. But unlike 2025’s closely clustered setup, the 2026 event hubs are set a short distance apart in Indianapolis’s downtown core. This could encourage pedestrian movement along connecting corridors – increasing retail and dining exposure and broadening the tournament’s economic impact.
All eyes will be on this week’s matchups between the final four teams, as the nation awaits the crowning of a new college basketball champion.
But if last year’s Final Four is any indication, the impact will extend well beyond the court. The broader ecosystem of multi-day programming is poised to drive local consumer engagement, reinforcing the tournament’s role as a catalyst for foot traffic and economic activity.
For more in-depth event insights, visit Placer.ai/anchor.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
Following a difficult 2025, Target appears to be on a recovery path. Weekly visits from February 2 to March 22, 2026 rose 6.6% to 10.3% year over year, suggesting that the company's turnaround strategy – which includes improving its product assortment and in-store experience – is beginning to deliver results.
In-store traffic volume during the company's recent Circle Days also suggest that a turnaround is on the horizon. Average daily visits during this year's Circle Days (March 25th to 27th 2026) were 2.9% and 5.9% higher than the comparable spring events in 2024 and 2025, respectively – despite those prior events benefiting from weekend days. (In 2024 and 2025, Target's spring Circle Day promotion ran for seven days.) Traffic was also higher compared to the YTD same-weekday average – that shoppers are returning to Target, with Circle Days further boosting already elevated traffic levels.
Target’s early-2026 performance suggests its turnaround efforts are beginning to resonate, supported by investments in stores, staffing, and merchandising aimed at improving the in-store experience. Encouraging traffic trends – including stronger performance during Circle Days despite already elevated baseline visits – point to renewed shopper engagement. If Target can sustain this momentum beyond promotional periods, it appears well positioned for stabilization and modest growth in 2026.
For more data-driven retail insights, visit placer.ai/anchor
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
IKEA’s recent decision to open a store in Tulsa, OK may seem surprising at first glance. But a closer look at the location analytics reveals a market with a compelling mix of inbound migration, rising incomes, and retail momentum – a combination that is putting the state of Oklahoma on the map as a next-tier retail destination.
So what do location analytics reveal about the trends shaping Oklahoma’s largest markets – and why did IKEA choose Tulsa, the state’s second-largest CBSA, over its biggest, Oklahoma City? We dug into the data to find out.
Population growth is often one of the first signals retailers look for. And while states like California, New York, and Illinois have continued to see domestic outflows in recent years, Oklahoma has been quietly gaining ground. Between January 2023 and January 2026, the state saw an influx of relocators equal to 0.3% of its 2023 population.
Both Oklahoma City and Tulsa have benefited from this trend – but Tulsa holds a slight edge, one factor that may be contributing to IKEA’s decision. The gap may seem modest, but in a mid-sized metro context, even small differences in migration can translate into meaningful increases in demand.
Another factor likely shaping IKEA’s decision is the quality of inbound migration. Data shows that newcomers across Oklahoma bring significantly higher median household incomes (HHIs) than existing residents.
And while Oklahoma City’s overall median HHI remains slightly higher than Tulsa’s, the income lift from new residents is more pronounced in Tulsa. Incoming households there earn about 7.1% more than local residents, compared to a 4.8% premium in Oklahoma City.
This stronger income differential points to a greater influx of higher-earning households – consumers who are more likely to drive discretionary spending. As they settle into new homes, these households often trigger immediate, high-value purchasing cycles, particularly in categories like home furnishings.
And these demographic tailwinds appear to be translating into real-world retail performance. Since 2024, year-over-year retail visits across Oklahoma have outpaced the national average.
At the metro level, both Tulsa and Oklahoma City have seen retail activity grow since 2023 – but only Tulsa has consistently outperformed the U.S. benchmark, and in 2025, it also surpassed the state as a whole.
The convergence of these factors – stronger migration, a more pronounced income uplift, and sustained retail outperformance – may help explain IKEA’s strategic choice.
IKEA stores are long-term investments, often serving as regional anchors for decades. Choosing Tulsa signals confidence not just in current demand, but in the market’s future trajectory.
And the data supports that bet. With stronger inbound migration, a greater concentration of higher-income newcomers, and above-average retail momentum, Tulsa is emerging as a quietly attractive growth market – one that may be flying under the radar, but increasingly checks all the right boxes.
For more data-driven retail analysis, follow Placer.ai/anchor.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
Chick-fil-A continues to carve out a distinctive growth story in the quick-service restaurant (QSR) space, pairing steady physical expansion with consistent gains in foot traffic. The latest data highlights a brand strengthening its position through operational efficiency, disciplined growth, and a loyal customer base that values quality and experience over aggressive promotions.
Supported by industry-leading average unit volumes, Chick-fil-A has successfully expanded its physical footprint without sacrificing store-level performance.
Recent traffic data from September 2025 through February 2026 illustrates this efficient scaling, as total visits rose consistently year-over-year throughout the entire six-month period while average visits per location remained elevated in four of those six months.
In addition, since September 2025, Chick-fil-A has largely outpaced other limited-service restaurants in per-location traffic growth, lagging behind QSR and fast-casual competitors only in October and November.
Notably, November’s sharp decline can be attributed to calendar dynamics rather than a drop in consumer interest – Chick-fil-A is famously closed on Sundays, and November 2025 had one more Sunday than November 2024, which could have placed the chain at a disadvantage relative to other restaurants.
Chick-fil-A’s resilience may be rooted in part in the strong alignment between its operating model and its customer base. Positioned as a premium QSR brand straddling the line between fast food and fast casual, the chain emphasizes consistency, menu simplicity, and high-touch service rather than heavy discounting.
This approach has helped Chick-fil-A maintain a top ranking for QSR customer satisfaction for over a decade. At the same time, its trade areas skew more affluent than those of traditional QSR competitors, providing a degree of insulation from macroeconomic pressures and supporting a willingness to pay for a reliable, higher-quality dining experience.
Chick-fil-A’s recent performance highlights a brand executing with discipline – expanding its footprint while maintaining strong unit-level productivity and outperforming key competitors. With a stable operating model and a customer base that supports its offerings, the chain appears well positioned to sustain its upward trajectory.
For more data-driven dining insights, follow Placer.ai/anchor.
Placer.ai leverages a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for visits to locations across the US. The data is trusted by thousands of industry leaders who leverage Placer.ai for insights into foot traffic, demographic breakdowns, retail sale predictions, migration trends, site selection, and more.
Traffic trends highlight a growing divergence between mono-brand boutiques and luxury department stores. While both formats have faced headwinds, department stores have consistently outperformed mono-brand boutiques on a year-over-year basis, maintaining relatively stable visitation compared to the sharper and more sustained declines seen across mono-brand locations. This gap has been especially pronounced since the second half of 2025, where mono-brand traffic trends weakened significantly while department stores showed greater resilience.
Part of this gap may be explained by structural differences between the formats. Department stores offer broader assortments, multiple price points, and the ability to support a range of shopping missions in a single visit, allowing them to capture demand across a wider spectrum of consumers. Mono-brand boutiques, by contrast, are more tightly tied to full-price luxury positioning, making them inherently more exposed to fluctuations in discretionary spending.
But even as luxury department stores offer a broader range of products that can appeal to a wider audience, trade area demographics suggest that mono-brand boutiques rely more heavily on aspirational shoppers. While both formats drew from affluent areas in 2025, mono-brand stores captured a higher share of households below the $100K income threshold – indicating greater exposure to more price-sensitive consumers. Department stores, by contrast, skewed toward higher-income households, providing a more stable demand base.
This distinction also helps explain the widening traffic gap between the two formats. As discretionary spending tightens, aspirational shoppers are often the first to pull back. And because mono-brand boutiques seem to depend more on this segment – and lack the pricing flexibility and assortment breadth to retain them – they are experiencing sharper declines. Meanwhile, department stores, supported by a more affluent customer base and greater assortment diversity, are better positioned to sustain traffic and overall performance.
The divergence between the two luxury formats suggests that both who shops and how they shop matter as much as brand strength. Mono-brand boutiques’ greater exposure to aspirational consumers leaves them more vulnerable in periods of constrained spending, while department stores benefit from both structural flexibility and a more resilient customer base. As the environment remains uneven, performance will likely hinge on a retailer’s ability to align format, pricing strategy, and audience with today’s shifting demand dynamics.
For more data-driven retail insights, visit placer.ai/anchor.
The past few years have provided the tourism sector with a multitude of headwinds, from pandemic-induced lockdowns to persistent inflation and a rise in extreme weather events. But despite these challenges, people are more excited than ever to travel – more than half of respondents to a recent survey are planning on increasing their travel budgets in the coming months.
And while revenge travel to overseas destinations is still very much alive and well, the often high costs associated with traveling abroad are shaping the way people choose to travel. Domestic travel and tourism are seeing significant growth as more affordable alternatives.
This white paper takes a closer look at two of the most popular domestic tourism destinations in the country – New York City and Los Angeles. Over the past year, both cities have continued to be leading tourism hotspots, offering a wealth of attractions for visitors. What does tourism to these two cities look like in 2024, and what has changed since before the pandemic? How have inflation and rising airfare prices affected the demographics and psychographics of visitors to these major hubs?
Analyzing the distribution of domestic tourists across CBSAs nationwide from May 2023 to April 2024 reveals New York and Los Angeles to be two of the nation’s most popular destinations. (Tourists include overnight visitors staying in a given CBSA for up to 31 days).
The New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA metro area drew the largest share of domestic tourists of any CBSA during the analyzed period (2.7%), followed closely by the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA CBSA (2.5%). Other domestic tourism hotspots included Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL (tied for second place with 2.5% of visitors), Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX (1.9%), Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV (1.8%), Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL (1.8%), and Chicago-Naperville, Elgin, IL-IN-WI (1.6%).
The Big Apple. The City That Never Sleeps. Empire City. Whatever it’s called, New York City remains one of the most well-known tourist destinations in the world. And for many Americans, New York is the perfect place for an extended weekend getaway – or for a multi-day excursion to see the sights.
But where do these NYC-bound vacationers come from? Diving into the data on the origin of visitors making medium-length trips to New York City (three to seven nights) reveals that increasingly, these domestic tourists are coming from nearby metro areas.
Between 2018-2019 and 2023-2024, for example, the number of tourists visiting New York City from the Philadelphia metro area increased by 19.2%.
The number of tourists coming from the Boston and Washington, D.C metro areas, and from the New York CBSA itself (New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA) also increased over the same period.
Meanwhile, further-away CBSAs like San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA, and Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL fed fewer tourists to NYC in 2023-2024 than they did pre-pandemic. It seems that residents of these more distant metro areas are opting for vacation destinations closer to home to avoid the high costs of air travel.
Diving even deeper into the characteristics of visitors taking medium-length trips to New York City reveals another demographic shift: Tourists staying between three and seven nights in the Big Apple are skewing younger.
Between 2018-2019 and 2023-2024, the share of visitors to New York City from areas with median ages under 30 grew from 2.1% to 4.5%. Meanwhile, the share of visitors from areas with median ages between 31 and 40 increased from 34.3% to 37.7%.
The impact of this trend is already being felt in the Big Apple, with The Broadway League reporting that the average age of audiences to its shows during the 2022- 2023 season was the youngest it had been in 20 seasons.
The shift towards younger tourists can also be seen when examining the psychographic makeup of visitors to popular attractions in New York City. Analyzing the captured markets of major NYC landmarks with data from Spatial.ai’s PersonaLive dataset reveals an increase in households belonging to the “Educated Urbanites” segment between 2018-2019 and 2023-2024.
These well-educated, young singles are increasingly visiting iconic NYC venues such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The American Museum of Natural History, and the Statue of Liberty. This shift highlights the growing popularity of these attractions among young, educated singles, reflecting a broader trend of increased domestic tourism among this demographic.
New York City’s tourism sector is adapting to meet the changing needs of travelers, fueled increasingly by younger visitors who may be unable to take a costly international vacation. How have travel patterns to Los Angeles changed in response to increasing travel costs?
While New York City is the East Coast’s tourism hotspot, Los Angeles takes center stage on the West Coast. And as overseas travel has become increasingly out of reach for Americans with less discretionary income, the share of domestic tourists originating from areas with lower HHIs has risen.
Before the pandemic, 57.6% of visitors to LA came from affluent areas with median household incomes (HHIs) of over $90K/year. But by 2023-2024, this share decreased to 50.7%. Over the same period, the share of visitors from areas with median HHIs between $41K and $60K increased from 9.7% to 12.5%, while the share of visitors from areas with HHIs between $61K and $90K rose from 32.1% to 35.8%.
Diving into the psychographic makeup of visitors to popular Los Angeles attractions – Universal Studios Hollywood, Disneyland California, the Santa Monica Pier, and Griffith Observatory – also reflects the above-mentioned shift in HHI. The captured markets of these attractions had higher shares of middle-income households belonging to the “Family Union” psychographic segment in 2023-2024 than in 2018-2019.
Experian: Mosaic defines this segment as “middle income, middle-aged families living in homes supported by solid blue-collar occupations.” Pre-pandemic, 16.0% of visitors to Universal Studios Hollywood came from trade areas with high shares of “Family Union” households. This number jumped to 18.8% over the past year. A similar trend occurred at Disneyland, Santa Monica Pier, and Griffith Observatory.
And like in New York City, growing numbers of visitors to Los Angeles appear to be coming from nearby areas. Between 2018-2019 and 2023-2024, the share of in-state visitors to major Los Angeles attractions increased substantially – as people likely sought to cut costs by keeping things local.
Pre-pandemic, for example, 68.9% of visitors to Universal Studios Hollywood came from within California – a share that increased to 72.0% over the past year. Similarly, 59.7% of Griffith Observatory visitors in 2018-2019 came from within the state – and by 2023-2024, that number grew to 64.7%.
Even when times are tight, people love to travel – and New York and Los Angeles are two of their favorite destinations. With prices for airfare, hotels, and dining out increasing across the board, younger and more price-conscious households are adapting, choosing to visit nearby cities and enjoy attractions closer to home. And as the tourism industry continues its recovery, understanding emerging visitation trends can help stakeholders meet travelers where they are.
The positive retail momentum observed in Q1 2024 continued into Q2 – as stabilizing prices and a strong job market fostered cautious optimism among consumers. Year-over-year (YoY) retail foot traffic remained elevated throughout the quarter, with June in particular seeing significant weekly visit boosts ranging from 4.7% to 8.5%.
The robustness of the retail sector in Q2 was also highlighted by positive visit growth during the quarter’s special calendar occasions, including Mother’s Day (the week of May 6th) and Memorial Day (the week of May 27th). And though consumer spending may moderate as the year wears on, retail’s strong Q2 showing offers plenty of room for optimism ahead of back-to-school sales and other summer milestones.
On a quarterly basis, overall retail visits rose 4.2% in Q2. And diving into specific categories shows that value continued to reign supreme, with discount and dollar stores seeing the most robust YoY visit growth (11.2%) of any analyzed category.
Other essential goods purveyors, such as grocery store chains (7.6%) and superstores (4.6%), also outperformed the overall retail baseline. And fitness – a category deemed essential by many health-conscious consumers – outpaced overall retail with a substantial 6.0% YoY foot traffic increase.
The decidedly more discretionary home improvement industry performed less well than overall retail in Q2 – but in another sign of consumer resilience, it too experienced a YoY visit uptick. And overall restaurant foot traffic increased 2.6% YoY.
Discount and dollar stores enjoyed a strong Q2 2024, maintaining YoY visit growth above 10.0% for six out of the quarter’s 13 weeks. Only during the week of April 1st did the category see a temporary decline, likely the result of an Easter calendar shift. (The week of April 1st 2024 is being compared to the week of April 3rd, 2023, which included the run-up to Easter)
Some of this growth can be attributed to the continued expansion of segment leaders like Dollar General. But the category has also been bolstered by the emphasis consumers continue to place on value in the face of still-high prices and economic uncertainty.
Dollar General, which has been expanding both its store count and its grocery offerings, saw YoY visits increase between 9.1% and 15.9% throughout the quarter. Affordable-indulgence-oriented Five Below, which has also been adding locations at a brisk clip, saw YoY visits increase between 4.9% and 18.8%.
And though Dollar Tree has taken steps to rightsize its Family Dollar brand, the company’s eponymous banner – which caters to middle-income consumers in suburban areas – continued to grow both its store count and its visits in Q2.
Grocery store chains also performed well in Q2 2024 – experiencing strongly positive foot traffic growth throughout the quarter. Though the sector continues to face its share of challenges, stabilizing food-at-home prices and improvements in employee retention and supply chain management have helped propel the industry forward.
Diving into the performance of specific chains shows that within the grocery segment, too, price was paramount in Q2 2024 – with limited-assortment value grocery stores like Aldi and Trader Joe’s leading the way.
Traditional chains H-E-B and Food Lion (owned by Ahold Delhaize) – both of which are known for relatively low prices – outperformed the wider grocery sector with respective YoY foot traffic boosts of 11.4% and 8.7%. But ShopRite, Safeway (owned by Albertsons), Kroger, and Albertsons also drew more visits in Q2 2024 than in the equivalent period of last year.
Fitness has proven to be relatively inflation-proof in recent years – thriving even in the face of reduced discretionary spending and consumer cutbacks. Indeed, rising prices may have actually helped boost gym attendance, as people sought to squeeze the most value out of their monthly fees and replace pricy outings with already-paid-for gym excursions.
And despite lapping a remarkably strong 2023, visits to gyms nationwide remained elevated YoY in Q2 2024.
Diving into the data for some of the nation’s leading gyms shows that today’s fitness market has plenty of room at the top. Planet Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, Life Time Fitness, Orangetheory Fitness, and LA Fitness all experienced YoY visit growth in Q2 2024 – reflecting consumers’ enduring interest in all things wellness-related.
But it was EōS Fitness and Crunch Fitness – two value gyms that have been pursuing aggressive expansion strategies – that really hit it out of the park, with respective YoY foot traffic increases of 23.4% and 21.4%.
The week of April 1st saw a decline in YoY visits to superstores – likely attributable to the Easter calendar shift noted above. But the category quickly rallied, and with back-to-school shopping and major superstore sales events coming up this July, the category appears poised to enjoy continued success throughout the summer.
Within the superstore category, wholesale clubs continued to stand out – with Costco Wholesale, Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale Club enjoying YoY foot traffic growth ranging from 12.0% to 7.4%. But Target and Walmart also impressed with 4.6% and 4.0% YoY visit increases.
Inflation, elevated interest rates, and a sluggish real estate market have created a perfect storm for the home improvement industry, with spending on renovations in decline. The accelerated return to office has likely also taken its toll on the category, as people spend more time outside the home and have less availability to immerse themselves in DIY projects.
But despite these challenges, weekly YoY foot traffic to home improvement and furnishing chains remained elevated throughout much of the Q2 – with June and April seeing mostly positive YoY visit growth, and May hovering just below 2023 levels. This (modest) visit growth may be driven by consumers loading up on supplies for necessary home repairs, or by shoppers seeking materials for smaller projects. And given the importance of Q2 for the home improvement sector, this largely positive snapshot may offer some promise of good things to come.
Some chains within the home improvement category continued to perform especially well in Q2 2024 – with rapidly expanding, budget-oriented Harbor Freight Tools leading the pack. But Ace Hardware, Menards, The Home Depot, and Lowe’s also saw foot traffic increases in Q2, showcasing the category’s resilience in the face of headwinds.
Restaurants – including full-service restaurants (FSR), quick-service restaurants (QSR), fast-casual chains, and coffee chains – lagged behind grocery stores and other essential goods retailers in Q2 2024, as price-sensitive consumers prioritized needs over wants and ate at home more often.
Still, YoY restaurant foot traffic remained up throughout most of the quarter. And impressively, the sector saw a YoY visit uptick during the week of Mother’s Day (the week of May 6th, 2024, compared to the week of May 8th, 2023) – an important milestone for FSR.
The restaurant industry’s YoY visit growth was felt across segments – though fast-casual and coffee chains experienced the biggest visit boosts. Like in Q1 2024, fast-casual restaurants hit the sweet spot between indulgence and affordability, outpacing QSR in the wake of fast food price hikes. And building on the positive YoY trendline that began to emerge last quarter, full-service restaurants finished Q2 2024 with a 1.4% YoY visit uptick.
Chain expansion was the name of the restaurant game in Q2 2024, with several chains that have been growing their footprints outperforming segment averages – including CAVA, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Ziggi’s Coffee, California-based Philz Coffee, Raising Cane’s, Whataburger, and First Watch. Chili’s Grill and Bar also outpaced the full-service category average, aided by the revamping of its “3 for Me” menu.
Retailers and restaurants in Q2 2024 continued to face plenty of challenges, from inflation to rising labor costs and volatile consumer confidence. But foot traffic trends across industries – including both essential goods purveyors like grocery stores and more discretionary categories like home improvement and restaurants – suggest plenty of room for cautious optimism as 2024 wears on.
Return-to-office (RTO) trends have been closely watched over the past few years, with relevant stakeholders trying to puzzle out the impact remote and hybrid work have had on business operations and worker performance. And while visits to office buildings, overall, remain below pre-pandemic levels, office recovery varies from city to city – reflecting the complex and nuanced nature of regional economic trends, workforce preferences, and industry-specific needs.
This white paper harnesses location analytics to explore office recovery in the country’s second-largest economy – Los Angeles. The first part of the report is based on an analysis of foot traffic data from Placer.ai’s Los Angeles Office Index – an index comprising 100 office buildings in LA (including several in the greater metro area). The second part of the report broadens the lens to analyze visits by local employees to points of interest (POIs) corresponding to four major LA-area office districts: Century City, Downtown LA, Santa Monica, and Culver City. The white paper examines the impact that return-to-work mandates have had on visits to office buildings, discovers which demographic groups are driving the RTO, and explores the connection between commute time and return-to-office rates.
The return to office in Los Angeles has consistently lagged behind other major cities, underperforming nationwide recovery levels since the pandemic ground in-office work to a virtual halt. Still, the city’s office buildings are seeing a steady increase in visits, with foot traffic tending to spike at the beginning of each year. This indicates that even though office visits in LA are still below national averages, they are on a steady growth trajectory – a promising sign for stakeholders in the city.
A closer examination of Los Angeles office buildings also shows that despite the overall lag, some top-performing buildings in the LA metro area are defying the odds. Visits to the 20 local office buildings with the narrowest Q2 2024 post-COVID visit gaps were down just 8.7% in June 2024 compared to January 2019 – significantly outperforming the nationwide average.
So while overall office recovery in the city is still behind nationwide trends, these top-performing buildings indicate an optimistic outlook for the city’s office spaces.
Diving into the demographics of visitors to LA’s top-performing office buildings reveals an important insight: these buildings are attracting younger workers. This cohort has shown a stronger preference for in-person work compared to their older colleagues.
Analyzing the buildings’ captured markets with psychographics from AGS: Panorama reveals that these buildings are attracting visitors from areas with larger shares of "Emerging Leaders" and "Young Coastal Technocrats" than the broader metro area.
"Emerging Leaders'' – upper-middle-class professionals in early stages of their careers – make up 20.3% of households in the trade areas feeding visits to these top-performing buildings, compared to 14.9% in the broader LA CBSA. Similarly, "Young Coastal Technocrats," young and highly educated professionals in tech and professional services, account for 14.7% of households driving visits to the top-performing buildings, compared to only 12.1% in the broader area.
The trend suggests that companies in these high-performing office buildings employ many early-career professionals eager to accelerate their careers and work in-person with colleagues and mentors. This is a positive sign for the future of the office market in the LA metro area, indicating that it is attractive to key demographic groups that are likely to drive future growth and innovation.
Over the past few years, the debate regarding return-to-office mandates has been a heated one. Will employees follow return-to-office requirements? Can companies enforce the return to office after offering remote and hybrid work options? Recent location analytics data suggests that, at least in the Los Angeles metro area, some return-to-office mandates have been effective.
Three major tech companies – Activision Blizzard, TikTok, and SNAP Inc. – recently made their return-to-office policies stricter. Activision mandated a full return to the office in January 2024. TikTok has also intensified its return-to-office policy while seeking to expand its office presence in the greater Los Angeles area. And SNAP Inc. required employees to return to the office earlier this year as a condition of continued employment.
Visitation patterns at each of these companies' respective headquarters suggest that their policies have directly impacted visit frequency. Since the beginning of the year, the share of repeat office visits (defined as two or more visits per week) has increased for all three locations. Activision saw its share of repeat office visits grow from 52.1% in H1 2023 to 61.4% in the same period of 2024. TikTok’s repeat visits grew from 49.5% to 61.0%, and SNAP’s repeat visits increased from 36.6% to 42.8%.
These numbers highlight how return-to-office policies can lead to noticeable changes in office visit patterns and offer a blueprint to other businesses looking to foster a stronger in-office workforce.
Los Angeles is the second-largest metro area in the country, with several distinct business districts across its sprawling landscape. And a closer look at four major office hubs in the greater LA area – Century City, Downtown LA, Santa Monica, and Culver City – highlights how the office recovery can vary, not just by city or demographic, but on a neighborhood level.
Weekday visits by local employees to all four analyzed business districts have rebounded significantly since 2020 – though each area has followed its own particular trajectory.
Culver City, home to major businesses including Sony Pictures and Disney Digital Network, saw the least pronounced drop in employee visits during the early days of the pandemic. And in Q2 2024, weekday visits by local workers were down just 18.4% compared to Q1 2019.
Century City, on the other hand, saw the most marked drop in local employee foot traffic as the pandemic set in. But the district’s recovery trajectory has also been the most dramatic – with a Q2 2024 visit gap of just 28.5%, smaller than Downtown LA’s 29.7% visit gap. Perhaps capitalizing on this momentum, Century City is expanding its business district with the addition of a major new office building, set to be completed in 2026 and serve as the headquarters for Creative Artists Agency. Santa Monica, for its part, finished off Q2 2024 with a 23.3% visit gap.
Century City stands out within the Los Angeles metropolitan area for its dramatic decline and subsequent resurgence in local employee foot traffic. And looking at another metric of office recovery – employee commute distance – further underscores the district’s remarkable comeback.
The share of employees commuting to Century City from three to seven miles away has nearly returned to pre-COVID levels – suggesting a normalization of commuting patterns by local workers living in the area. In H1 2019, 33.5% of workers in Century City commuted between 3 and 7 miles to work; in 2022, that number had dropped to 29.8%. But by 2024, the share of visitors making that commute had grown to 32.5% – much closer to pre-COVID numbers.
Similarly, the region’s trade area size, which had contracted significantly in the wake of the pandemic, bounced back significantly in 2024. This serves as another indication of Century City’s rebound, cementing Century City’s status as a key business hub within the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Five years after the upheaval caused by the pandemic, office spaces are still changing. Although the Los Angeles area has taken longer to recover than other major cities, analyzing local visitation data shows significant potential for the city’s business areas. With young employees leading the return-to-office charge, the city is poised to keep driving its strong economy and adjust to an evolving office environment.
