Price space on visits as well as sales
As shopping moves online, physical space increasingly earns its keep as a showroom and a meeting place. To value it fairly for rents, tenants and screens, you need hard data on who passes, who enters and how long they stay.
Footfall-based rents and tenant insight, measured privacy-first.
Trusted by
Why mall operators choose Bumbee Labs
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Fairer rents, better mix
Set footfall-based terms, place each tenant where the traffic suits them, and back it all with numbers both sides accept.
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Monetise screens and events
Reach, impressions and exposure-minutes justify ad rates. Flow and cross-shopping data show which locations are true anchors, false anchors and dead zones.
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Privacy-first across the centre
The measurement is anonymous and approved by a data protection authority, at every entrance, on every floor and in the food court.
On this page
Mall analytics, or shopping centre footfall analytics, measures visitors at a centre’s entrances, hallways, food court and individual units, and how long they stay. It runs mostly on the centre’s existing Wi-Fi, with additions where coverage is weak. Bumbee Labs is the company behind the only footfall method in Europe approved by a data protection authority.
The short version
- Mall analytics counts visitors at a centre’s entrances, hallways, food court and individual units, with dwell time and the flows between them, mostly over the Wi-Fi the centre already has.
- Seven planning questions have answers below: footfall-based rents, screen and event prices, anchors and dead zones, one set of figures for tenants, maintenance timing, crowds and the tenant mix.
- Standard figures are ready the day after the visit; near real-time threshold alerts come through the Crowd Alert add-on.
- A flagship Stockholm mall used the data to move rents onto footfall, price its screens on exposure and schedule maintenance around visitors.
Which decisions can mall analytics support in a shopping centre?
Turnover rent does not show what a unit is worth when shoppers buy online. What should a lease rest on?
Add measured visits to the lease. In a shopping centre, counts of passers-by, entries and stays per location show what a unit delivers even when the purchase happens online, and give landlord and tenant one figure for footfall-based terms. Wi-Fi people counting produces the counts on the centre’s own Wi-Fi; for the negotiation itself, see turnover rent.
How do we price the screens, advertising spots and event spaces in the mall?
Price them on measured exposure: reach within the day, impressions and exposure-minutes for each screen and event space in the centre, with different rates by day and time. You can also show event renters, in figures, what their event delivered. DOOH metrics explained shows how the figures are calculated.
Which tenants are true anchors and which are false anchors, and where are the dead zones in the mall?
Look at where visitors go after each unit. Zone correlation along the centre’s hallways shows which anchors send visitors on to their neighbours, which are false anchors, and where the dead zones are. Add dwell time by area to see where people stay and where they only pass, then place each tenant on that evidence.
Our tenants do not trust the centre’s visitor figures. What would they accept?
Show them the same figures the owner and centre management see. One visitor series reaches all three, so rent and tenant talks start from measured evidence instead of disputed sales reports. It comes through the People counting API or the dashboards, and the centre can offer tenants the data as a value-added service.
When can cleaning, maintenance and deliveries run without getting in the visitors’ way?
Run them in the quiet hours of each part of the shopping centre. The footfall / visitor count by sector, cluster and location shows peaks and trends across the day and the week, so you can see when each area is quiet and the work disturbs visitors as little as possible.
Saturday peaks and the Christmas rush: where do crowds and bottlenecks build up in the centre?
Peaks in mall footfall and bottlenecks by hallway, entrance and floor show where a shopping centre fills up on a Saturday or in the Christmas rush. Retail heatmaps show how people flow between areas. The standard figures arrive the day after the visit; near real-time threshold alerts need the Crowd Alert add-on.
Which categories is the centre missing for the audience it actually draws?
Start from the audience the centre really draws. Data on where visitors come from shows how far that draw reaches. Read it against the movement between existing units and the tenant mix gets a factual base. The same evidence shows prospective tenants what the location pulls in.
Which other questions can a shopping centre answer with its footfall?
- Is the food court overfull at lunchtime, and are there enough seats?The food court is one of the areas counted, so its visitor numbers and dwell time can be read next to the rest of the centre.
- How do we show a prospective tenant the traffic past a vacant unit?Passers-by and visits are counted per location, so the traffic outside a unit can be quoted as a measured figure.
- The anchor store is closing or moving. What happens to its neighbours?Per-location visit counts let you compare the units around the anchor before and after the change.
- Did the rebuild, the new entrance or the new floor plan change how people move?Counting the same locations before and after the work shows what changed in visits and flows.
- Did the fashion show or the Christmas market lift the whole centre?Visits during and after the event, set against comparable days, show the uplift; zone-level counts tell you whether the centre or only the venue gained; see measure event impact.
- Do the car park’s spaces last on a Saturday?Parking is measured separately, as occupancy against capacity by zone and hour; see parking occupancy measurement.
- What does the centre’s calendar look like in visits: Black Friday, Christmas, the sales?Visits per week are read against the centre’s own baseline; see the retail year in visitor numbers.
- Tenants want shorter opening hours and the centre wants to stay open. What do the visits say?Visits by hour and day, and the passers-by outside current hours, show the demand for each hour; see staff planning with footfall data.
- How many of the visitors buy from the tenants?With POS data added, the funnel from passers-by to entries, stays and purchases shows where visits end in a sale; see in-store conversion rate.
- Do regular customers come back, and how often?Return visits and visit frequency across days are measured only with visitor opt-in; visitors who leave and return within one trip are counted correctly.
What data you get
- Visitor countsfor the whole centre, sectors, clusters and individual locations.
- The conversion funnelper location: passers-by → enter → stay → (with POS) buy.
- Dwell timeby area, and zone correlation / cross-shopping: where people go next and which anchors pull traffic to their neighbours.
- Flow and path analysismore detailed and more actionable than heatmaps.
- Reach and impressions for screensunique exposures within the day and exposure-minutes that justify ad rates.
- Peaks, trends and bottlenecksfor staffing, maintenance scheduling and safety, ready the day after the visit.
→ See the complete metric catalogue
What did a flagship Stockholm mall do with its footfall data?
Working with Bumbee Labs for years, the mall moved from sales-based to footfall-based rents, priced screens and event spaces on real exposure, and scheduled maintenance and deliveries to disturb visitors as little as possible. The operator then rolled Bumbee Labs out across its other malls.
Where this fits
- Screens and billboards are a revenue line of their own (see outdoor & DOOH advertising analytics).
- For the surrounding catchment and how people arrive, see city-centre & smart-city analytics.
Curious what this looks like for your venue?
Approved and validated
The method is approved by a data protection authority and validated by academia, partners and customers. It measures the whole centre without identifying a single shopper.
We are very happy to announce this partnership with Bumbee Labs to boost our Wireless solutions portfolio and bring what we believe is the future for retail businesses, measured by trustful data. What can't be measured, can't be improved.
Frequently asked questions
Can a shopping centre base its rents on footfall analytics rather than sales?
Yes, it is one of the main uses. With the conversion funnel and visit counts per location you can set footfall-based terms and offer tenants the data as a value-added service.
Will mall analytics hold up in a shopping centre with many entrances and very high footfall?
Yes. The method is statistical, so very high visitor numbers improve accuracy. Visitors who leave and return during one trip are also handled correctly.
Can owners, centre management and tenants each get their own view of a shopping centre's footfall data?
Yes. The same data can be shown in three views: the owner sees the whole portfolio, centre management works from location dashboards, and tenants can be offered their own intelligence feed.
Where this fits
Industries and segments
Metrics
Methods
Platform and integrations
Data protection:GDPR-compliant footfall analyticsThe IMY decisionGDPR-compliant vs approved