Post-Covid European Shopping Centre Market

The shopping centre European market in the post-covid19 era

Reading various articles on the shopping centres segment shows that this asset class is in irreversible crisis, with more than one commentator questioning their future. Causes contributing to the problem in the Real Estate sector include an increase in online sales and damage to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has been causing for over a year.

Shopping centres have suffered (and are still suffering) from prolonged periods of closure, putting both landlords and tenants in serious difficulty.

I have been working in this sector for 25 years, and I am a keen student of the dynamics of shopping centres; despite the difficult times, I do not think that this market is in its terminal phase. The "physical shop" trade will not be supplanted by e-commerce but will integrate with it. Shopping centres will maintain, and even strengthen, even more, when the pandemic is defeated, their role as places of social aggregators.

It is my opinion that the "shopping centre product", developed for decades in an overly standardised way, must change, innovate and adapt to the needs of a market that has evolved and is highly segmented.

As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote,…