London must get itself up to speed

The streets of London are a lively place to be this weekend; entertaining, even. For the past few weeks former parking spaces and patches of pavement have been tidied up to make way for holding bays for London’s new pay-as-you-pedal bicycle scheme, officially dubbed “Barclays Cycle Hire”. Last weekend special test teams could be seen pedalling at speed through the city putting the new bikes through their paces and ensuring that the payment systems were glitch-free for the Friday launch.

At the same time, the city’s asphalt has seen the arrival of even more tyres in the form of growling, purring and humming vehicles from all over the Gulf. Maseratis, Rollers, Bentleys, Aston-Martins and pimped-out Porsche Cayennes have been sent to London to escape the blistering sunshine of Manama and Doha. My favourite vehicle was a pinky-mauve Rolls-Royce spotted in front of the Berkeley Hotel – complete with pink palm licence plates and an equally tasteful interior to match. The extreme mix of vehicles seems reflective of contemporary London: back-to-basics, personal-powered vehicles for the masses and customised castles-on-wheels for the few who keep the city’s tills ringing, restaurants crammed and hotels fully booked.

Cooler temperatures aside, I’d wonder what keeps people from Saudi, the UAE and Oman coming back to London season after season. Is the shopping really that great? Is the service that outstanding? Is life really that relaxed and liberated around Connaught Village? How many times can you do a lap of Selfridges in any given week of August?

If shopping is indeed one of the biggest draws for visitors from the Gulf then London’s going to have to work fast and hard to ensure it holds on to the substantial spend racked up on cards from Jeddah, Sharjah and Muscat. In the city’s West End, Saudis spend on average £1,678 per visit while the Emiratis aren’t too far behind with their £1,224 per person contribution to the local economy, according to figures from shopping and city guides Global Blue and Visit London. However, just as the Germans have stolen a sizeable chunk of the UK’s medical tourism business with higher tech and cleaner clinics, the same could easily happen to the city’s retailers if they don’t come up with a more compelling proposition to keep Gulf families filling their dressing rooms.

If the eastern reaches of Oxford Street and top end of New Bond Street were looking tatty two years ago, they’re close to turning into no-go zones with their temporary shop fronts and vacant spaces. Even the slightly livelier western end of Oxford Street hasn’t managed to quite reinvent itself into a place where people would want to spend much time. On a positive note, the people behind the agency responsible for giving London’s West End a bit of direction – the New West End Company – do recognise there’s a lot of work to be done and have come up with a plan. The negative is that it falls short of the mark – and not just for high-spending Gulf tourists.

Among a range of proposals to whip the West End into shape between now and 2020 is the desire to attract some 20-plus international flagship stores to the area, cut the number of buses that rumble down Oxford Street outside of rush hours, “entertainment zones” to host events such as fashion shows, more public spaces to increase what’s referred to as “dwell”, and the creation of fast and slow shopper lanes. What’s missing is a focus on the softer elements that can both ensure greater spend for retailers and restaurateurs but also an enhanced connection with London as a whole. Getting to grips with service would be a better place to start, followed by a good, old-fashioned scrub-down.

As Emirates and Etihad have recently opened up flights into Tokyo, there are certainly more leisure visitors shopping in Ginza and Marunouchi on Saturday afternoons and, as a result, a growing constituency of discerning consumers sampling the delights of exceptional retail service for the first time. There’s also an attraction to shopping in newly developed or renewed spaces that are secure, open late and offer a wealth of places to graze: the Marunouchi Building(s), Tokyo Midtown and Roppongi Hills come to mind as new favourites for visitors from Abu Dhabi. As flight frequencies and capacity increase into Japan (and Korea), these markets pose the biggest threat to London’s shopping scene.

To stay relevant, the New West End Company might want to take one of the larger, derelict shop spaces and turn it into a service academy-cum-community college focusing on shop-service excellence and also rethink the zoning and also the mix of retailers it wants to promote. The West End needs to become a place where things are not just consumed but also made (a real Savile Row, ateliers for craftsmen and shopfronts for cobblers) and where people actually live rather than just pass through.

Tyler Brûlé is editor-in-chief of Monocle

tyler.brule@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/brule