Hospitality drives city centre growth as Edinburgh occupies top spot

by XPRESS, 07 May 2023

CGA by NIQ and Wireless Social 's latest Top Cities report found pubs, restaurants and bars in Britain 's largest cities showed solid year-on-year year growth in the first quarter of 2023.

However, these comparisons have benefited from weak retail trade at the beginning of 2022 due to concerns over the omicron version, although high inflation is also affecting growth.

The Top Cities Report combines sales data from CGA by NIQ together with check-in data from Wireless Social to provide the best value for money ranking of the 10 urban locations in the first quarter.

London comes in second when it comes to the number of clerical workers and visitors, followed by Sheffield in third, Glasgow in fourth and Bristol in fifth.

Elsewhere in the 'Top Cities' rankings, third-placed Sheffield is the most high-performing city in the north of England, with Glasgow coming in at fourth delivering a strong quarter for Britain.

Leeds, Birmingham and Liverpool face challenges linked to the cost of living and rail strikes, which will hamper the recovery after these storms.

The quarterly Top Cities: Vibrancy Rankings are based on a powerful combination of sales data collected from the annual CGA-administered volume pool of over 8.000 bars and restaurants and Wireless Social' s guest data collected from over one million logins.

The quarterly Top Cities: Vibrancy Rankings are a blend of sales data from CGA' s Managed Volume Pool and Wireless Social guest data, providing an up-to-date evaluation of the UK 's leading towns "food and drink markets.