There’s always a point when you notice it.
The sunny terrace suddenly has empty tables. The outdoor screen comes down. Festival season starts winding down. Mornings get darker, coats come back out and places that felt packed a few weeks ago start to feel different.
It’s easy to ask: where did everybody go?
But maybe the more interesting question is:
Where are they going next?
People move with the season
September is a really obvious example.
Back to school. Back to university. Back to work. Back to commuting. Back to routines.
The festival pint becomes the after-work drink. The lazy morning becomes the pre-lecture coffee. The outdoor screen becomes an indoor experience. The summer market becomes an autumn pop-up. The holiday treat becomes a little everyday pick-me-up.
But September isn’t unique.
Our routines shift throughout the year, and the places we choose shift with them.
January brings the post-Christmas reset. Spring brings longer days, Easter, bank holidays and more reasons to get outside. Summer brings holidays, festivals, sporting events and outdoor eating. Autumn brings routine back into focus, before Black Friday and Christmas change behaviour all over again.
Then there are all the smaller shifts in between.
A hot weekend can pull people towards parks, coasts, terraces and outdoor events. A wet one can redirect visits towards shopping centres, leisure and indoor experiences. School holidays change family routines. A concert or sporting event can change an evening economy. Payday can change what people are willing to spend.
UK footfall research consistently shows how quickly people change where they spend time in response to weather, holidays, events and other moments in the calendar.*
The audience hasn’t vanished. The context has changed.
Follow the need, not just the crowd
That distinction matters.
When we think about where a brand should appear, or what might work in a venue, it’s tempting to start with footfall.
Where are the most people?
But a crowd isn’t automatically an opportunity.
Sometimes the more useful question is: what do those people need now?
Convenience. Connection. Entertainment. Somewhere warm. Somewhere outside. A quick lunch. An after-work drink. Something for the kids. Somewhere to spend an hour. A little treat. Something new to discover.
The need changes with the season, the weather, the calendar and people’s routines.
September gives us a particularly good example.
Recent UK search research found school-related search intent peaking at 3.7x average in August, while university-related interest built from September and remained 34% above average through December.**
We might casually group all of that together as “back to school”, but they’re different audiences, at different times, looking for different things.
And that’s the interesting bit.
Seasonal thinking shouldn’t just mean changing a window display, putting pumpkins out in October or starting Christmas earlier every year.
It’s about understanding what has changed for the person on the other side of it.
When people move, opportunities move too
For brands and operators, a change in season can be a reason to rethink where and how you show up.
A brand that works brilliantly at festivals in summer might find its autumn audience in a shopping centre, station, university, business district or indoor event.
A product associated with holidays might find a completely different role as an everyday treat.
A digital brand might discover that a short physical appearance makes sense around one particular moment in the year.
And that doesn’t always mean opening a permanent store.
Pop-ups, kiosks, activations, concessions, vending, events and short-term spaces can allow brands to follow an audience, test a location or try a different format at the moment it makes most sense.
Flexible retail is increasingly being used in exactly this way: to test new locations, supplement permanent stores during important trading periods and connect with audiences around particular events or seasonal moments.***
For venues, landlords and destinations, the same idea works in reverse.
A space that has one purpose in summer might have another in autumn. An external area changes with the weather. An event programme ends. A different audience arrives. A vacant unit creates an opportunity to test something new rather than simply waiting for a long-term occupier.
Short-term retail and pop-ups can give places a way to respond to those changes too, bringing in new concepts, activating underused space and testing what resonates with an audience.****
Which is why I keep coming back to this thought:
One venue’s change of season could be a brand’s next opportunity.
So, where are people going next?
There isn’t really one “seasonal customer”.
People move between work and leisure, indoors and outdoors, term time and holidays, daytime and evening, big occasions and little everyday treats.
The opportunity isn’t necessarily to fight those changes.
It’s to notice them.
Where are people going next?
What will they need when they get there?
And who could meet them there?
For a brand or operator, that might reveal the next audience or location worth testing.
For a venue, landlord or destination, it might reveal the next idea worth bringing into a space.
And sometimes, they might simply be looking for each other.
People × Place.
Research & further reading
MRI Software, OnLocation UK Footfall Analytics and retail insights. MRI’s ongoing analysis explores the impact of weather, holidays, events and other calendar moments on visits to UK retail destinations.
** Captify UK Search Intelligence, Back to School research. School-related search intent peaked at 3.7x average in August, while university-related interest remained 34% above average through December.
*** SpaceandPeople, What’s Actually Working in Pop-Up Retail for 2026, exploring event-led activations, seasonal retail and flexible space as a way for brands to test locations and respond to trading periods.
**** MRI Software, Why short-term retail is no longer optional: How Pop-Ups are becoming a core strategy for landlords, exploring the growing use of pop-ups and flexible leasing by brands and property owners.
Research and sources current as of September 2026 and may be updated as new data becomes available.
Studio Notes explores the things we notice about people, places, brands and the spaces between them.
