Go climbing or compete in a video game in the middle of the stores: at the Mapic trade fair, commercial real estate professionals want to develop the leisure offer to attract customers who have become accustomed to shopping. online or near.
The desire to put leisure in the middle of shops is not completely new: already in 2019, the company Reed Midem, which organizes Mapic, announced that the show would now be coupled with another event called LeisurUp, dedicated to leisure.
"The Covid has been there and it has been a driving force behind this trend," Nathalie Depetro, director of Mapic, told AFP.
With the confinements, many French people have indeed taken the fold of online shopping and no longer see the point of traveling to the shopping center, except to be able to do something other than their usual purchases.
"We went from a business of need, to a business called envy," said Christian Dubois, distribution expert at the consulting firm Cushman & Wakefield.
This year, 50% of the Mapic exhibition area is dedicated to leisure operators. In the middle of the stands where business cards and promises of contracts are exchanged, promoters and investors in suits can thus embark on a game of video games. Some throw balloons at a wall with a football cage or shoot around them with a plastic gun, virtual reality glasses over their eyes.
Despite the pandemic, which has weighed heavily on leisure activities, "we really feel a craze from shopping centers for our facilities", comments Peggy Parisot, marketing and communication manager for the company NeoXperience, which creates video game "arenas" .
"Customers are looking for a turnkey solution," to fill in the blanks, she adds. And the easier the installations are to install and uninstall, the more the mall can create a sense of surprise for the consumer.
