While both malls and high streets experienced a drop in footfall when the heat was at its peak, malls fared relatively better than high streets
IndiaRetailing Insights: As the heatwave scorched the national capital region (NCR) in the last week of May, the footfalls in high streets and malls saw a sharp drop of 20% and 6% respectively, compared to the previous two weeks. This was revealed by an analysis of the footfall traffic data conducted by location AI startup GeoIQ across retail hotspots including malls and prominent high streets in the region.
GeoIQ analyzed footfall data from the top 7 malls in Delhi namely Ambience Mall, Ambience Mall Vasant Kunj, DLF Mall, DLF Promenade, Pacific Mall, Select Citywalk, and Vegas Mall in Dwarka. The high streets analyzed include Chandni Chowk Market, Connaught Place (CP) Market (Rajeev Chowk area), Janpath, Khan Market, Lajpat Nagar Market, Sarojini Nagar Market, and South Ex 1 and 2.
The data shows that the foot traffic patterns witnessed a decline in the last week of every month from January through May. The footfalls in the markets of Delhi in the last weeks of the first quarter of the calendar year 2024 i.e. Jan, Feb, and March showed an average drop of 5% across all major retail hotspots. In the last week of May 2024, however, this dip across major retail hotspots was more pronounced – a massive 15%, owing to the record-breaking heat in the national capital, when the temperatures hit the 50 degrees mark in most parts of the NCR region.
This year’s last week of January saw a drop of 3.28% in footfall in high streets and an 11.44% decrease in the malls. Comparing these numbers to the last week of May, the trend reversed with high streets reporting a drop of 20.25%, while malls experienced just a 6.03% decline in footfall. This can be attributed to consumers preferring the air-conditioned shopping environment provided by malls to the outdoors of high streets in the face of a record-breaking increase in temperatures.
Upon closer inspection of the high streets, the same trend was observed as the lowest dip in footfall in high streets happened at high-end markets. South-ex received an average weekly footfall of 11.5 lakh, and Khan Market received an average weekly footfall of 3 lakh in May. Both these markets have a higher density of air-conditioned showrooms. These areas show a dip of 13% and 14% in footfall respectively, which is comparatively lower than other high streets in NCR.
On the other hand, the highest dips were in high streets dominated by street vendors: a 22.35% reduction in footfall was seen in Sarojini Nagar, followed by Lajpat Nagar, which recorded a drop of 19.80%.
Among malls, DLF Promenade, which witnessed an average decline of 18% in the last week of each month of 2024, barely saw any drop in footfall in the last week of May. Furthermore, Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj which saw a decline of 14% in the same period saw an increase of 3% in footfall.
“An analysis of the footfall data patterns from the national capital reveals that offline retail is dynamic, governed by a myriad of consumer nuances and topical components unique to every geographical location. This is where location intelligence takes centre stage for retail brands. We believe that as much as the future of retail is omnichannel, it has to be data-driven too,” explained Ankita Thakur, co-founder & chief data officer of Bengaluru-based GeoIQ, which harnesses mobile data from millions of devices and applies advanced machine learning to generate accurate footfall and other insights for any store or location.
