The holiday season is upon us and the customer is ready to spend. To make hay while the sun shines, the malls are rolling out promotional activities to engage and attract the consumer.
Select Citywalk mall in Delhi has spent Rs.80 lakh on decoration and promotional activities at the mall and is expecting over 15-18 per cent of increase in the sales. The spokesperson says, "Sometimes the walk-in and parking is so high, that we have to stop the cars from coming in or we ask the customers to park the cars in adjacent malls."
Deepti Goel, head, leasing, Ambience Mall, informs, "Ambience mall has done lot of activities to reach out to our target group. We have tied up with Red FM to bring out a show called ‘ Har Khwahish pe Dum Niklega’. In this show, Ambience mall sponsors gift for people who are able to complete given tasks successfully. Apart from this, Santa gives gift to all the children in the mall, and every parked car is given a gift voucher."
"Special promotional activities for the festive season began from December 24 and will continue till January 2. We have spent approximately Rs.3 lakhs on these promotional activities," says Vishaal Rangwane, manager leasing, Magneto mall, Raipur.
Ambience mall, Gurgaon (NCR) claims to have constructed the tallest Christmas tree in India, "and lot of people are coming in only to see it," Goel says. According to her, the season will see an increase of two per cent over the regular footfall. Magneto mall is expecting footfall of 10,000 per day during this time.
"Christmas and New Year brings the best out of us usually and this year too we have a stunning event called Inorbit’s Christmas Magic. The 13-day event aims to celebrate the true spirit of Christmas and will run simultaneously at all our three malls. Typically, across our three malls we shall be spending in excess of Rs.75 lakhs," infroms Kishore Bhatija, chief executive officer, Inorbit Malls (India) Pvt Ltd.
Nucleus mall, Maradu, has organised various promotional activities such as workshop on cooking, mehandi and tattoo carnival, game competition, chatting session with celebrities, X’mas cake exhibition and smart mom-kid competition, Prince Varghese, DGM- strategy and marketing, ABAD Builders Pvt Ltd informs. He further adds that that the footfall of the mall has increased multifold during the ongoing festive season. Nucleus mall spent close to Rs.10 lakhs on the decoration and promotional activities.
Bhatija observes, "Christmas has year-on-year witnessed record footfalls. We are sure that this year too, our operations team will be more than able in handing the rush. Typically, we get 15 per cent additional footfalls per mall in our experiential events and I am sure we shall easily cross the two million footfall mark across our malls in December."
Arindam Kunar, vice-president, Malls Management, DLF Place Saket, says, "We will spend over a crore on the festival, and we feel it is well worth spent to create a differentiation between our mall and the others which ultimately will benefit our tenants and their sales. We have already received very encouraging feedback from our tenants. We are expecting to increase our footfalls over 25 per cent over and above our normal footfalls. Revenues will substantially go up for almost all tenants. The higher footfalls and a great retail category mix in our mall ensure a great experience for our customers. Having the best of entertainment and food and beverage options ensure that the average time spend in the mall by our customers are amongst the highest in Delhi malls."
"Right now, mall is addressing footfall of 10,000 people per day," Varghese claims. To handle the parking woes, the mall has acquired additional space for the season. He adds, "The parking is handled by a professional agency (Building control solutions). Currently, we have parking space for 250 car and we have acquired more spaces for adequate parking. We have well trained manpower – customer care executives, mall supervisors, security personal for taken care of heavy walk-in during peak time."
Rangwane of Magneto mall, Raipur expects the sales and revenues to go up 30 per cent during this period. He says, "We have made special arrangements to handle additional footfalls by deploying extra security staff. We have also increased our parking area by opening mall’s second entrance and installing metal detectors."
Given that even the malls are spending as much to deck up, even the retailers can expect a good ending to the year.
– Shubhra Saini
