LeisurUp launches at packed Leisure Day

Leisure took centre stage in Cannes yesterday as MAPIC dedicated a full day to its Leisure summit. And the breaking news was the launch of Reed MIDEM’s global B2B event — LeisurUp — which will focus on helping the leisure industry to create vibrant new experiences. Liz Morrell and Sarah Morris report

INCREASINGLY, sophisticated leisure options are now “critically important” to retail developments in order to drive footfall and attract tenants, the MAPIC Leisure conference heard yesterday. Such offers benefit other tenants, extend catchment reach, replace dead anchors and, ultimately, increase rent roll, said Michael Collins and Yael Coifman, senior partners at Leisure Development Partners, in their international overview session. Collins and Coifman highlighted research that shows a consistent growth in leisure spending across countries. “Retail spending in bricks and mortar is still predominantly strong, but leisure is slowly growing in importance,” Coifman said. “In almost all cases, retail spend per capita trickled along. On the other hand, we see a consistent growth in leisure spending across various European countries.” Coifman said developers need to consider the “wow factor” and viability of such concepts in order to make money. “The wow factor is how much drawing power it can have. The more educational you get, the less people enjoy it.” Her example showed that destination theme parks, indoor waterparks and IP-branded family entertainment centres typically provide the biggest wow. And she said it was something that all developers should be pursuing. “The worst reason ever

Kenneth Gunn, managing director, Ken Gunn Consulting

the remuneration needs to be the same or more [as traditional tourism excursions],” Cicala said. For outlet centres, making the most of the tourism opportunity is key and for many represents a significant proportion of sales. Joan Jove, managing director of southern Europe for McArthurGlen, said for some of his 24 centres more than 60% of sales come from tourists, a proportion that has risen dramatically over recent years. “They spend much more than domestic customers, are very important and are definitely a source of growth for the future,” he said. This is in part due to a growth in tourism in general but also the fact that tourists are becoming more focused on shopping. “Shopping is becoming a more important part of their holiday and outlets are better known to the tourist as part of their journey,” Jove said. And he is keen to foster more partnerships with those in the tourism industry. “Our job is to partner with as many tourism players as possible to be integrated into the tourism areas of each of the areas we are in,” he added. Rethinking the tenant mix to meet the need of three demographics — immediate, regional and international tourists — is key to making outlet destinations more attractive than ever, delegates on another panel session said. Part of this involves delivering on experience. “We answer this with the keyword accessibility,” said Andrea Contino, chief marketing officer at Scalo Milano Outlet & More. He said this was core to the shopping element of outlets, allowing customers to buy some

Aureliano Cicala, general manager, MSC Cruises

thing they don’t buy anywhere else because of price. “We are doing the same with experience and culture, using our location to make culture accessible, for example offering customers theatre experiences, music experiences, art and collaborating with NGOs as we want our customers to access culture for free,” Contino said. Among the potential new tenants looking for outlet space is Sushi Shop, which has 175 stores worldwide. Sushi Shop development director Francois Chateau said the company’s success in travel retail and malls means that the outlet market is a good fit. “We are thinking of developing our business in the outlet market. We believe in these types of locations the food offer is quite poor and we can offer something new and quite different and also something people can buy when they leave the outlet because it’s an easy product to take home.” When it comes to adding leisure to the mix, the choice also has to offer something different, according to Gaston Gaitan, founder of Theleisureway. “Leisure for us is not just about having a playground. It’s about how to add value to the asset. You need to try to understand how to create legacy with the community,” he said. Despite the success of the outlet sector, there remains a job to do in educating brands about the potential of the designer-outlet concept, which is an essential element of bringing the sector to new markets, according to Brendan O’Reilly, chief executive of Fashion House Group. He said that retail brands in markets unfamiliar with designer outlets are often concerned about the risk of “cannibalising” sales in their full-price stores. “The perception is that cannibalisation of sales will get worse,” O’Reilly told delegates at the event. “What we’ve been doing with tenants is working on a much more flexible lease so people can come and try it. That’s what you have to do in new markets.” O’Reilly was speaking during the New Outlet & Mixed-Use Modern (Re)Development Projects session, hosted by Lisa Wagner, principal of The Outlet Retail Group (TORG). He was joined on stage by Otto Ambagtsheer, chief executive of Via Outlets; Max Poole, partner at architect Holder Mathias and Urban Edge Properties executive vice-president and chief operating officer Chris Weilminster. During the session the panel unveiled a number of new and redeveloped outlet centres from Europe and the US. Among these was the Freeport outlet centre in Lisbon, which Via Outlets has recently revamped according to its “Three Rs” approach of remerchandising, remodelling and remarketing an outlet space. Poole said that revamping a centre while a centre was still “live” and open to the public posed a particular architectural and engineering challenge, adding that it “tends to be the really technical elements that are the real drivers” of a project.

LEISURE ON THE UP

NEXT year sees the launch by MAPIC organiser Reed MIDEM of a new international event dedicated to the leisure industry. The two-day LeisurUp event will take place on November 16-17, 2020 and will run across a 2,000 sq m exhibition zone. It will be located in its own venue close to the Palais des Festivals, with space to host 2,500 delegates from 80 countries. Francesco Pupillo, MAPIC’s deputy director, announced the new event during yesterday’s Leisure Day. Delegates from the world’s leisure destinations, including local and public authorities, will attend as well as operators, suppliers and service providers, Pupillo said.