Visitation Data
Downtown Halifax is attractive to visitors for many reasons. Aside from the city’s history alone, many come for the world-class attractions and events, Halifax’s Seaport, the Waterfront, and of course the unique and local restaurants and shops.
DHBC is dedicated to keeping our members, and stakeholders abreast of key vibrancy metrics for Downtown. With this in mind, DHBC started purchasing cell phone data from a company called Environics.
Environics provides us with visitation data four times a year, that tracks "visits" on a weekly basis and matches it to our BID boundary.
Reporting note - we base the percentages off of data collected during the exact timeframe the previous year.
2023-2024 (April 2023-March 2024)
Q4 (Pending)
Q3 (October, November, December)
Key Highlights:
- October was down 4% vs last year.
- November was up 16%.
- December was up 60%.
Overall, visitation for the third quarter of our fiscal year (October to December) saw an overall increase of 21.3% from the same period in 2022.
Q2 (July, August, September)
Key Highlights:
- July was down 4% vs last year.
- August was up 5%.
- September was up 13%.
Overall, there was a 5% increase in Q2 in 2023 over last year – so, GOOD NEWS! We topped 4M visitors in that time.
Q1 (April, May and June)
Key Highlights:
- April was up 9% vs last year.
- May was down 13%.
- June was down 8%.
Overall, there was a total reduction of 5.42% in visitation vs the same period in 2022.
Sales Data
DHBC receives sales data from Dalhousie Transportation Collaboratory (DalTRAC) at the end of each year.
2023 Results
- Food and drink rose 3.1%
- Retail fell by 4.6%
- Personal Services fell 29.7%.
- Accommodation rose 0.5%
Reports
Downtown Halifax Crime Stats
January 1, 2019 to February 26, 2024
State of the Downtown Report
(A new SOTD report will be released at the end of June 2024)
In June 2023, DHBC released our first 'State of Downtown' report. This report now gives us a reference point each year when reporting this type of data. The goal always being to paint a clear, fact-based picture of Downtown Halifax, allowing us to chart a new vision, and ensuring that we remain Canada’s Favourite Downtown.