Europe's busiest commercial streets revealed

By

Matthieu Guinebault

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Nov 20, 2017

Last June, BNP Paris Real Estate monitored actual footfall traffic in the top commercial streets of 23 European cities, from London's Oxford Street, the busiest, to Paris' Champs-Elysées, top of the ranking for luxury thoroughfares.

The busiest of all turned out to be Oxford Street in London, with 13,560 pedestrians per hour. More surprisingly, the runner-up was Kaufinger Strasse in Munich (12,800 pedestrians/hour), outstripping Calle des Preciados in Madrid (10,290), the Zeil in Frankfurt (10,200) and the Champs-Elysées avenue in Paris (10,277). 

Behind them, the ranking confirmed the strength of Barcelona, with two thoroughfares in the top 10, and Copenhagen, with three in the top 30. Many cities featured at least twice, among them Paris, London, Prague, Stockholm and Dublin.

BNP Paris Real Estate also analysed what they defined as 'luxury prime streets'. Paris led the ranking with the avenue des Champs-Elysées (10,200 pedestrians/hour), just ahead of Barcelona’s Passeig de Gracia (10,130). They were followed by London's Regent Street (9,200), and a Copenhagen double, with Amagertorv (8,000) and Ostergade (7,490). All them are notable venues for luxury goods shopping, though not exclusively so.

Other leading luxury shopping streets in Paris, such as avenue Montaigne (714 pedestrians/hour) and rue Saint-Honoré (2,042) were further down the table, while the French capital's other leading commercial street, boulevard Haussmann, was 19th in the overall ranking with 8,143 pedestrians/hour. "Now that the spectacular renovation of Les Halles [in Paris] is finished, rue de Rivoli is getting ready for the reopening of the Samaritaine department store's building," said Paris real estate group CBRE. "As a result, the area is attracting many new names in search of high-level locations."

BNP Paris Real Estate measured the footfall of Europe's leading commercial streets simultaneously on Saturday 10th June, between 2 pm and 4 pm, taking into account the differences in terms of daily habits and peak shopping hours among the various cities.