Property Management feature: Innovative examples of how companies are making buildings as safe as possible during the pandemic.

Published 19 Oct 2020

Despite Covid providing shopping centres with challenges, leisure and retail centres remain the heart and soul of the community. The moment a retail reopening date was confirmed, Portus Retails’ focus was on our property management elements and running successful centres post lockdown.  We immediately turned our attention to social media and digital marketing for one of our shopping centres, Docks Bruxsel, to publicise our strict health & safety guidelines.

Customers and tenants alike were eager to hear how the shopping centre was as safe as possible. We introduced hand sanitisation stations, opened doors and the roof to allow better air circulation and aircon switched off, security teams checking use of face masks and size of groups entering while complying with regulations, social distancing markers and queuing systems, clear signage on number of permitted customers per store to obey with regulations and social distancing. All of this combined with clear and concise messaging (including POS) regarding the importance of health and wellbeing of customers and staff, we believe aided us in getting our customers and staff back swiftly. 

Meticulous enforcing and policing of the regulations outlined in our communication were implemented including, but not limited to: split staggering teams to ensure Covid isolation bubbles, deep cleaning of any store with temporary closure if any staff developed symptoms, pedestrian flow counts and hot spots using security teams to review footfall counter and live feedback from WiFi beacons to actively manage overcrowding situations and avoid breaking social distancing guidelines. 

Overall, with careful precision, providing customers with a delicate balance of reopening excitement and education on safety, Docks Bruxsel has been very successful, achieving 99% of the footfall compared to the same period in 2019, highlighting the safe and precautionary measures put in place for Covid, customer experience has not been affected. 

For further information please contact the PR team: 

lauren.hillyer@bwpgroup.com | +44 7970 242 134

Share