Dundrum Town Centre introduces ‘crowd checker’ feature on website

The operator of Dundrum Town Centre has introduced a feature on its website to allow consumers see whether the centre is busy before travelling.

The “crowd checker” feature provides shoppers with live updates on how busy the centre is in real time.

It will use technology from a company called ShopperTrak which measures footfall to 98 per cent accuracy and works with retailers and shopping centres across Europe, Asia and the United States.

Four statuses inform shoppers how busy the centre is.

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If shoppers are told “now is a great time to visit”, that means that fewer than 1,500 people are in the centre. If they’re told it “is really popular right now”, more than 4,000 people will be in the mall.

Footfall

On its website, Hammerson says Dundrum has an annual footfall of 18 million people, suggesting a daily footfall of just under 50,000 people. The extent to which that has changed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic is unclear. The centre was closed almost in its entirety between March and June.

Hammerson did not immediately respond when asked by The Irish Times whether footfall in Dundrum had changed since the centre reopened.

"We know that some customers are still a little nervous about visiting their favourite shops and want to beat the crowds," said Don Nugent, the centre manager, in a statement.

He added that the technology would enable those shoppers “to check how popular the destination is in live time before they visit so they can plan their trip”.

Dundrum has more than 169 retail tenants, almost 140,000sq m of floor space and about 3,400 car parking spaces. Ordinarily, capacity is limited to about 7,000 people, it says.