The weighted average vacancy rate in shopping centers in Kyiv continues to grow, in March 2023 it reached 21.5%, which is almost twice as high as in the same period last year, Director of the Ukrainian Trade Guild (UTG) Yevgenia Loktionova told the Interfax-Ukraine agency. The expert reported that the continuing growth of free space especially affected SECs of regional (vacancy 30.9%) and district (19.2%) formats. “Therefore, now more than ever, the effectiveness of the mall’s work, first of all, depends on the bilateral ability to negotiate: both on the part of the management company and on the part of the retailers,” – notes the director of the UTG company Yevgenia Loktionova.

To overcome the negative consequences, shopping malls are trying to more actively attract non-standard tenants (from shopping malls to museums, as was recently done in the “Gulliver” SEC). Thus, the spaces vacated after the departure of the tenants begin to be used as venues for conferences/events or even as exhibition spaces. However, according to the manager of UTG, visitors of such formats are impulse buyers for the rest of the tenants, although they may become regular customers of the shopping center in the future.

“Such non-standard tenants can temporarily solve the problem of vacant premises, play a situational advertising role, but are unlikely to be able to gain a foothold in the shopping center and become a stable flow generator. This is due to the fact that they often do not pay rent, do not generate a flow and are not commercial,” – Loktionova notes.

At the same time, considering the prospects of educament (a tenant who conducts educational activities) in shopping centers of Ukraine against the background of a limited range of anchors, the expert emphasizes its prospects. Although he says that educament is a novelty for our country, therefore it needs significant resources to create significant marketing support. “However, in the conditions of war, developers are not ready to invest significant sums in the development of new functions. Therefore, we should return to this issue after our victory,” – she emphasizes.