Outdoor Shopping Center Sales Inch Closer to Pre-Pandemic Levels, While Indoor Malls Have Better Quality of Visitors

Outdoor shopping centers continue to be the preferred retail experience for consumers. By the end of August, consumer traffic was down only 24.6% at outdoor shopping malls compared to pre-pandemic foot traffic, according to research from Placer.ai. This is a significant recovery from March and April, when outdoor foot traffic was down nearly 100%. Indoor malls have not fared as well. The same report shows that indoor mall foo traffic, while also vastly improved from March and April, is still down 37.2% from pre-pandemic levels.

While both outdoor malls and indoor malls are improving overall, week-to-week data also show volatility. For outdoor malls, the week of August 31 was a decline from August 17, when foot traffic was down only 18%. The week was a post pandemic hit a peak for foot traffic. Indoor malls actually outperformed outdoor malls the same week for the first time during the pandemic with foot traffic down only 17% from pre-pandemic levels.