Flows of pedestrians in Braunschweig: Stable through gastronomy and culture!

Flows of pedestrians in Braunschweig: Stable through gastronomy and culture!

The frequencies in downtown Braunschweig show pleasing stability and even slight increases in the months relevant to trading. According to a recent report by the Braunschweig City Marketing GmbH A total of around 42 million pedestrian movements were recorded in the period from September 1, 2024 to August 31, 2025, which corresponds to an increase of around 0.5% compared to the year before last.

A particularly large number of visitors flocked to the city during the winter months, with the Advent season reaching its peak with around 4.2 million visits in December 2024. For comparison, the first Saturday of Advent on November 30, 2024 saw around 255,000 pedestrian movements, which was the busiest day of the year.

A mix of offers

According to the evaluations, the stable development of pedestrian flows is supported by a wide range of restaurants, services, doctors and cultural institutions. The catering industry in particular recorded an increase of 25% on Neue Straße. In addition, an analysis shows that the months September to February often have similar frequencies, with the summer of 2025 being less busy than the previous year.

One factor for the frequency shifts in the city center was the temporary closure of the Packhof underground car park, which began in January 2023 and only reopened on August 20, 2025. In the meantime, visitors have increasingly used the Wallstraße car park and the Schloss-Arkaden car park. After the Packhof underground car park reopened, pedestrian movements on the Sack street increased by 11%.

New technology being tested

In order to record visitor frequencies more precisely, Braunschweig city marketing is currently testing an innovative measurement technology called “Ariadne”. This use of anonymous antenna signals from mobile devices for frequency measurement could represent a significant improvement over the previous laser measuring devices that have been in use since 2016. The pilot test will run until the end of October 2025 and was successfully used for the first time during the 2024 Christmas market. However, previous measurements also revealed technical defects that influenced the comparison data.

Ariadne is characterized by lower measurement failures and enables additional evaluations that could provide more precise results regarding the number of visits to the city center. On average, visitors stay at the measuring location for around 67 minutes, and it is hoped that the new technologies will also be able to collect data on walking routes, group sizes and length of stay.

Digital urban development

Continuous frequency measurement is not only important for city marketing, but also plays a crucial role in urban planning and other areas such as traffic management and economic development. The more precise the data is, the better strategies can be designed for the development of urban spaces. The data is used, for example, to evaluate the attractiveness of the location and to optimize transport and infrastructure development measures. At the same time, great importance is placed on data protection, so that the data collected is anonymized and treated in accordance with applicable data protection regulations.

Overall, the city of Braunschweig can look forward to a positive development in visitor frequencies, which is further promoted by continuous measurements and innovative technologies. Under citymarketing.eu Find out more about digitalization and the importance of frequency measurement for the development of lively cities.