Sunway Pyramid, Malaysia’s most iconic themed shopping destination, has recorded its highest traffic growth in 2017. The mall’s car count saw a positive 5% growth as compared to the year before amidst cautious consumer sentiment, disruption in ecommerce and the opening of more new malls in Klang Valley.
Kevin Tan, the Chief Operating Officer of Sunway Malls, attributed this positive increase in traffic to multiple reasons.
“Our Chairman, Tan Sri Dr. Jeffrey Cheah’s foresight to take pro-active steps to ease vehicular traffic congestions within Sunway City and Subang Jaya successfully facilitated better driving experience to Sunway City, said Kevin.
“Tens of millions were spent to construct a new flyover, which flows traffic from KESAS into Sunway City with ease. More millions were then spent to widen the NPE roads leading to the Kewajipan roundabout, thus reducing congestion and freeing up the NPE road in front of the mall,” he continued.
The flyover and road expansion were funded by Sunway as part of its community service to visitors of Sunway City. Sunway also contributed substantially to the Bus Rapid Transit, providing the community a cleaner alternative public transportation within Sunway City.
There is also a plan in the pipeline to ease the congestion due to weaving traffic in front of the gateway entrance to the mall.
Another co-relating factor is the increased parking capacity with the addition of the mall’s new wing, Sunway Pyramid West, where Sunway Clio Hotel is situated. Currently, the mall has approximately 10,000 parking bays integrated with Sunway Resort Hotel and Spa, Sunway Pinnacle and other Sunway business units nearby.
“In addition to the 5% traffic growth, we see ride hailing as another key driver that positively contributed to the increase in footfall of the mall. The popularity of ride hailing services such as Grab and Uber is a plus factor providing alternative transportation to the mall without taking up our car park bays. It is estimated that
these ride service arrivals is as high as 20% of the mall’s average car arrival”, said Kevin, who believes that ride hailing helps lessen the demand of car park bays during peak hours, which in return allow higher turnover of bays with lesser congestion and increasing the mall’s capacity to receive more cars.
The mall also had a proliferation of non-shopping offerings expanding relative to shopping offerings with the growing trend on F&B and leisure spending.
“The demand for F&B over the last few years had been so significant that 25%-30% of the today’s malls’ leaseable area is now catered to this trade category. Years ago, F&B took up less than 10% of the malls’ overall leased space. If you combine both the F&B and leisure trade categories today, it can go beyond 50% of the nett lettable area
in a mall and these are significant traffic contributors,” Kevin explained.
The growth in traffic complements the mall’s plan to upgrade its parking ambience this year. The mall is uplifting its car park by applying epoxy flooring, starting with the Preferred Parking zone, and allocating charging stations for Mercedes electric vehicles.
“We are further improvising the driving experience in our car park. A fresh coat of paint and flooring coated with epoxy is currently in progress, starting with our CP2 Preferred Parking. In view of the popularity of the Preferred Parking, we are allocating another zone for shoppers seeking convenience at B1,” said Jason Chin, General Manager of Operations for Sunway Malls, who also said that there is regular security patrol by the mall’s auxiliary police as safety has always been the mall’s top priority.
“We are striving to create various new experiences to remain relevant to our shoppers. Those who visited the mall recently would be pleasantly surprised by sounds of the nature, especially birds chirping at our car park lobbies. We also decorated the lobby area so it creates a more wholesome ambience that depicts nature,” he
continued.
As for the tenants’ sales, the mall so far saw a positive growth for most of the brands. “With increased footfall, tenants have the opportunity to benefit with better sales performance. Our tenants are reporting robust growth in 2017. We cannot deny the challenging times for retailers as shoppers are spoilt for choice today. Those who
offer value marketing, social retailing and strong brand loyalty appeal to shoppers to spend at their particular store,” said Kevin.
2017 was a key milestone for Sunway Pyramid as the mall celebrated its 20th anniversary and was accorded The Edge Malaysia Property Development Excellence Award.