UPDATE 1-US shopping traffic up on Black Friday weekend -NRF

NEW YORK, Nov 30 (Reuters) - U.S. holiday traffic to stores and websites rose during the Black Friday weekend, fueled by repeat trips, higher shopping for deals online and deep discounts at retail chains, the National Retail Federation said on Sunday.

More than 172 million shoppers visited stores and websites from Thanksgiving Day on Thursday through Sunday, up from 147 million a year ago, according to the NRF. The average amount of money spent by shoppers over the weekend rose 7.2 percent from a year ago to $372.57 per person.

Excluding repeat visits, the number of people who went shopping over the weekend rose to 110 million from 99.5 million a year ago.

But the NRF kept its forecast for total holiday season sales growth of 2.2 percent to $470.4 billion, saying that consumers had done more of their holiday shopping over the Black Friday weekend than in the past.

Retailers are likely to see a strong decline in shopping over the coming weeks and may be forced to offer even more aggressive discounts to attract purchases, the NRF said.

"We take all of this into context and realize Black Friday is not going to save the holiday season," spokeswoman Ellen Davis said.

"We saw a lot of people really sticking to their lists. That's why we need to be a little subdued with the findings," she said. "Regardless of retail sales, retail profits are another matter. Everything they sold was at a razor-thin margin." (Reporting by Michele Gershberg; Editing by Bernard Orr)