Fear Ahead: As hospitals prepare for the fearsome black icon, shopping streets are packed with people. Shoppers looking for the best deals during Black Friday, the upcoming festival of sale from the United States. This fear turned out to be unfounded. While cities such as Rotterdam and Eindhoven had to close their malls early last year due to congestion, that is not the case now.

Black Friday spokesperson Paul T. Grotenhuis of retail organization INretail reported at the end of the afternoon. According to him, this is partly because stores no longer focus all their discounts on one day, but rather spread them out over several days. ,, In addition, it is also quieter because it rains in large parts of the Netherlands, it is dog weather. Not good for buying appetite, but good for keeping shopping streets free of corona.”

According to INretail, which monitors crowds on its shopping streets, it was less crowded at around 2 p.m. than the average for the past eight Fridays. The organization hired an agency that uses counting sensors to measure how busy they are in different shopping towns. In addition, many municipalities have posted their portals to check if things are getting out of hand.

The Dutch Payments Association has announced that in the past four days, debit card payments at checkout have been nearly 10 per cent more frequent than the same days a week earlier. Turnover was slightly less (about 5 percent) than last year. The figures for the number of online payments are not yet known.

Due to the high incidence of coronavirus and the growing resistance to the bargaining festival, not all stores participate in promotions anymore. Chains such as H&M, Bever Sport, Decathlon, Ikea and Dille & Kamille have banned this phenomenon. And other retail companies, such as Hema, are focusing more on Sinterklaas deals.

Especially now that so many people have contracted the coronavirus among their members, there is a brake on visiting brick-and-mortar stores and we are ordering more online. Parcel deliverers note that they are busier than usual. According to a spokeswoman, the company was fully prepared. Last year, the company processed about 1.7 million parcels per day on peak days. The company now has 2 million parcels, because the company has two more sorting centers. DHL processed about 1.2 million packages on Friday, compared to 1 million last year.

In the first three weeks of November, nearly 8 percent of online purchases were made compared to the same period last year, according to an analysis of consumer spending in online stores by ABN Amro. If this spending trend continues in the coming weeks, the 2020 record may be broken. Last year, consumers spent about 50 percent in online stores around Sinterclass compared to 2019.

But not all online stores are equally popular. US web giant Amazon had to deal with climate activists in an extinction rebellion around the world on Friday. They have closed, among other things, the Amazon distribution center in Schiphol. Amazon offers several deals every year on Black Friday and this goes against the sad part of the activists. “This company is fueling the obsession with excessive consumption. This is not fit for a livable world,” said Extinction Rebellion. The FNV syndicate also campaigned against the online store company. Union members walked in inflatable boats in front of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s new yacht, which is currently under construction in Alplacerdam.