Major mall developers in the Philippines are confident of better business this Christmas as the country fully exits from the dragging effect of the new coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.
Speaking at a panel discussion in the 29th National Retail Conference and Expo at the SMX Convention Center yesterday, Graham Coates, Megaworld Lifestyle Malls head, said the confidence may be seen as early as the onset of “ber” months.
“We’re seeing the full recovery now. From the mall perspective, our occupancy levels are higher than pre-pandemic, our foot traffic is back to normal. So we are really anticipating a very strong third and fourth quarter,” said Coates.
“We’ve increased occupancy. We still have some space, rents have gone back to normal now. We can say we fully recovered from the woes of the pandemic. We can look forward to the future,” he added.
“It’s evident in malls, foot traffic, it’s evident in sales. We see it also in the confidence and excitement of the retailers to introduce new brands, to bring in new concepts from all over… There’s a lot of data to show that the Christmas numbers should be should be doing well,” said Faraday Go, Robinsons Malls general manager.
This makes Christopher Maglanoc, Ayala Malls president, “excited” for the upcoming spending season of Christmas, specially since this will also be the first “normalized” Christmas for the public.
The retail business is now “really back,” according to Steven Tan, SM Supermalls president, who said that as retailers do good in their business, so will retail space owners.
Coates noted the growth of the retail business primarily anchors on the ability of people to travel and go out again. This has benefitted the food and beverage segment.
“The restaurants are really doing very well. We’ve got the recovery of the restaurant business, and we’re bringing in new categories to cater to the customers as well. These new categories are leisure related,” he said.
