The shopping malls across Tamil Nadu reopened after five months on Tuesday staring at a lean crowd and poor business. The number of people visiting the malls are comparatively less due to the fear of contracting the coronavirus infection. However, the shop owners are confident that the sales will boost up in the coming days considering the efforts taken by them to maintain sanitation to curb the spread of coronavirus.
The Phoenix Marketcity was closed after a few shopkeepers tested positive for coronavirus in March. Five months after the spread, the management is more than cautious to curb the chance of coronavirus spread. The Phoenix Marketcity has even designed an app to track the people visiting the mall. From the entry point to every touch point in the mall is being sanitised on an hourly basis.
The people visiting the mall should download the nhance app created by Phoenix and the Arogya Setu app suggested by the central government. The visitors should follow the stickers for ensuring six meters distance between the people entering the mall. The visitors should show the app and sanitise their footwear by stepping into a wet sanitiser mat. The bags should be kept in trays for UV sanitisation and the temperature of individuals will be checked through a thermal temperature scanner.
Despite the series of precautionary measures, the number of people visiting the malls are less and the food courts continue to remain closed. The children's play area in the malls will also remain closed until further orders by the government allowing them to reopen.
The shops were fumigated before reopening and the touch points are sanitised every hour, said a shopkeeper. Kumaran, a shopkeeper of a clothing brand said, “We got information that malls can reopen on Tuesday so we have sanitised and deep cleaned the stores. We have done fumigation and we are sanitising the touch points every hour. Even though we did not have sales for the past five months, we have been in contact with the customers.”
“We are trying to learn about the health status of the customers and are sending them details on the new trends and fabrics available with us. We have successfully opened the stall after five months. So we hope the sales will get back to normal,” he said.
As the footfall of people continues to be low, the shop owners are planning to contact the customers urging them to come back for shopping. “We opened the store only yesterday (Tuesday). We have been contacting all our customers and they have assured us that they will visit the shop.”
The authorities of Express Avenue Mall in Royapettah are also making efforts to sanitise malls yet the number of people visiting the mall was normal on the first day but the second day witnessed lower footfall and the shops were facing no sale days.
Speaking to TNM, a manager of a global retail chain store in Express Avenue said that the footfall has been drastically low when compared with pre-COVID times. “It is expected that the number of people coming into the store will be lesser than earlier. But we are optimistic. The store here has opened only from September 1 and we think this is too early to tell,” he said, requesting anonymity.
However, he highlighted a slight change in the trend of the shoppers who have managed to come to the store in the first two days of reopening for business. “There are a lesser number of people who are browsing through the products. We are seeing an increase in the number of shoppers who exactly know what they want, visit and complete their purchase in a very short time and exit the shop,” he explained.
He adds that since the stores in other states have already reopened for business and Tamil Nadu is the most recent in the lot, the retail chain has the benefit of prior experience in dealing with resuming business. “Since our stores in a few other states are already open after COVID-19 lockdown, we have learnt from them and we are confident that those lessons will come in handy in Tamil Nadu,” he added.
The shop owners are expecting an increase in the number of people visiting the malls on the weekends and are hopeful that the business will come back to normal like the pre-COVID days due to the measures taken by them. However, as more malls are relying on technology, the common people without access to mobile phones entering the malls have also become impossible.