Major landlords including Hammerson and British Land have set out their reopening strategies, as non-essential shops in England prepare to open again on 15 June.
Outdoor markets and car showrooms will be able to reopen from 1 June, while non-essential outlets – including shops selling clothes, shoes, toys, furniture, books, and electronics, tailors, auction houses, photography studios and indoor markets – will be able to follow suit in three weeks.
Hairdressers, nail bars and beauty salons, cafes, pubs and other hospitality venues will remain temporarily closed, however, given the increased risk of transmission from person-to-person contact.
Naturally the shopping experience will look very different from what it used to be before the lockdown, as operators look to restrict visitor numbers, direct foot traffic and enforce social distancing.
Among these, intu, Hammerson, British Land, Landsec and Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield have each mapped out measures including new cleaning regimes, hand sanitation stands, one-way systems and floor stickers and signs to mark social distancing spaces.
Measures are also being taken to limit visitor numbers, including the closure of some parking spaces.
At intu, Hammerson and British Land, customer-facing staff will also be given protective equipment such as face masks and gloves. British Land is also installing plexiglass screen barriers at visitor and reception desks.
Preparations at Hammerson’s retail locations and Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s two centres in White City and Stratford, meanwhile, include managing visitor numbers through live footfall cameras.
Hammerson will additionally bring in queuing systems at entrances, where required.
High streets across the UK will also undergo changes. Councils will be able to access a £50m “Reopening High Streets Safely” government fund that will support safety measures including new signs, street markings and temporary barriers.
All eyes are fixed, however, on whether these measures will go far enough to encourage shoppers to return to bricks-and-mortar locations.
Tim Vallance, head of investor services and retail chairman at JLL, said that shoppers may initially be left “confused in a maze of cordons and tape” as the public adjusts to browsing with safety measures and social distancing in place.
Despite this, he anticipates “huge” demand in the medium term. He points to the “revenge-shopping” phenomenon in Asia this month, which has fuelled hopes for a consumer rebound after lockdown measures are eased.
He added that some large, individual retailers that have reopened in Europe have achieved weekly footfall increases of up to 160%, compared with the same week in the previous year.
“There will be a willingness from the public, and retailers will drive footfall through discounting methods,” Vallance said.
Recovery may take some time, however. To give a sense of footfall figures emerging from overseas reopenings, IKEA’s shopping mall arm Ingka Centres, which has been gradually opening centres that temporarily closed during the lockdown, has said that visitors to its LIVAT centres in Beijing and Wuxi in China each reached 67% and 81% in April, compared with the same month last year.
Its centre in Wuhan was the most affected, where footfall stood at 45% on the previous year’s levels after two weeks of trading. In Poland, after 51 days of lockdown, visitor numbers returned to 87% of 2019 levels.
See also: Revo issues guidance on reopening retail locations
See also: BRC issues guidance for store reopenings
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