Indoor, Outdoor Mall Visits Down in September as Retail Recovery Slows: Index
Originally published on October 6, 2021, by Ethan Chernofsky for Placer.ai BLOG.
Top tier malls across the country had been experiencing a steady recovery since the start of 2021. This recovery culminated in July when visits to indoor malls rose 1.0% above the same month in 2019, with outdoor mall visits rising 1.8%. Pent-up demand, a lack of travel, general excitement around the retail reopening and more all combined with the Back-to-School retail season to drive an impressive month.
Yet, when we last looked at the Mall Index, visits had fallen off of their impressive growth pace with August returning to declines of -2.5% for indoor malls and -4.7% for outdoor when compared to August 2019. Rising COVID cases, a comparison to an early Labor Day weekend in 2019 and a return to school all contributed to limit the recovery and reestablish the visit gap.