Fair weather, steady crowds and ample staffing have made this year’s downtown shopping season a successful one — and retailers there are hoping for a strong finish.

Each year, the city’s Magnificent Mile attracts holiday shoppers from the city, suburbs and around the world with its selection of high profile retail destinations, including Nordstrom’s, Macy’s, Apple and a number of smaller chain and independent shops.

Following what was considered to be a good haul in profits during last year’s holiday season, retailers on the city’s celebrated shopping strip were more than prepared to accommodate this year’s returning crowds.

“Right off the bat, the retailers were gearing up for a hectic season and had every expectation to be as busy or busier than last year,” said John Chikow, CEO and president of the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association, a group that promotes the retail corridor as a tourism and shopping destination.

Heading into the shopping season, Chikow said that many retailers hired at or above their staffing levels from the previous year, due in part to a number of early indicators that foresaw generous stream of crowds coming shopping in December.

According to ShopperTrak, a national foot-traffic counting service for malls and retail shops, retailers across the country saw a 10.6 percent increase in retail sales during the week ending on Dec. 10, compared to the previous week. That figure still fell short by 1.9 percent compared to shopper traffic during the same week in 2010.

Last week, the National Retail Federation upped its prediction for country-wide sales revenues for holiday shopping to a record $469.1 billion — a 10 percent increase from the group’s October estimate.

Locally, Chikow said that earlier signs of high foot-traffic for the shopping season came in November, when crowds showed up in droves for the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival, an annual nighttime celebration where retail shops show off their window displays and hold events on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Michigan Avenue also saw a surge of international shoppers on Black Friday, he said.

“We knew at the beginning of the season that we were already tracking in good shape,” said Chikow.

The season’s mild weather also helped to bring out shoppers who might have otherwise stayed indoors, he said.

With Christmas just a few days away, retailers are now looking to attract that final rush of last minute gift-seekers to their shops.

Erica Strama, senior marketing manager for the Shops at North Bridge, a collection of stores at the southern end of the Mag Mile, said that some stores, such as Nordstrom’s, offer complimentary gift wrapping and other services as Christmas Eve approaches.

“It’s about going above and beyond to make shopper’s lives a little bit easier as they know this is sort of crunch time,” she said.