The number of traditional travel agents has almost halved in ten years as the rise of online shopping takes its toll on the high street, according to a new report.
The number of tattoo parlours, convenience stores and health clubs has soared at the same time as the internet has forced a change for the high street’s shop fronts.
Travel agencies and entertainment stores are among those showing a decline, replaced up by online retailers such as Amazon and price comparison websites.
Their empty premises have been replaced by shops that provide the kind of service a mouse click cannot deliver, says the report by Experian which has tracked the changes in 2,000 key retail locations around the UK.
Richard Jenkings, a senior consultant at Experian, said the figures showed how the internet has had a dramatic effect on the make-up of the British high street in the past decade.
“The high street has clearly become a more social environment, with more restaurants, cafés and leisure facilities emerging up and down the country,” said told The Times.
The changes suggest that “time-pressured consumers are increasingly expecting the high street to play a different role, providing services that can exist as a complementary offering alongside internet shopping,” he added.
The number of takeaways has risen by 54% with fish and chip shops seeing an 84% rise. There are now more than twice as many health clubs as there were in 2003 and the number of tattoo parlours has surged by 173%.
The area of greatest growth is convenience stores, such as Tesco Express and Sainsbury’s Local, as the total number of outlets rose by 186%.
The findings were backed up by a separate report by PwC and the Local Data Company, which found that 3,003 shops shut during the first half of 2014, equivalent to 16 closures daily.
Although the closure rate was not as bad as last year’s level of 18 daily closures, the number of new shops opening has slumped from 3,157 to 2,597, which meant a “net” loss of 406 shops over the six months to June, compared with 371 for all of 2013.
Mike Jervis, a retail specialist at PwC, described the findings as “depressing” for town centres.
He told The Times: “At this point in the economic cycle, maybe you’d expect to see more optimism in openings, but you’re not. It’s clear that the high street is still suffering as people migrate online or to out-of-town shopping centres.”