.svg)
After steep mid-single-digit year-over-year declines in late 2024, Best Buy's (BBY) store traffic is beginning to stabilize. The retailer saw same-store visits fall just 1.5% year-over-year (YoY) in Q1 2025, with the decline narrowing further to 1.2% in Q2. Even more encouraging, several months since January have posted flat-to-positive foot traffic growth – a promising trend as Best Buy approaches the all-important holiday season, where it traditionally excels.
Best Buy’s recent traffic improvement likely stems from continued strength in its computing, mobile phone, and tablet offerings – segments with natural upgrade and replacement cycles that many consumers view as essentials. At the same time, foot traffic data indicates that the company’s online channel – which posted a 2.1% increase in U.S. digital sales last quarter – is helping drive quick in-store visits as customers take advantage of fast BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store) options.
As illustrated in the graph below, short-duration visits (under 10 minutes) have consistently outperformed longer ones in 2025, underscoring the role of in-store pickup. In January, short visits jumped 5.3% YoY, likely boosted by Best Buy’s first-ever January Member Deals Days promotion. And in June, short visits increased 4.6% YoY, coinciding with the highly anticipated Nintendo Switch 2 launch, which featured special midnight store openings for eager customers.
While Best Buy trimmed its full-year outlook last quarter and has yet to see a true rebound in store traffic, the narrowing visit gap signals rising consumer engagement. With strengthened omnichannel execution and traffic tailwinds from product launches – as well as the a third-party marketplace set to launch next week – Best Buy may be poised to deliver a strong holiday season ahead.
To see up-to-date retail traffic trends, try Placer.ai's free tools.
The past few years have been challenging for many retail categories, particularly those reliant on discretionary spending. For top athletic retailers like DICK'S Sporting Goods, Academy Sports + Outdoors, and lululemon athletica, this has translated into sustained pressure on physical store visits.
Yet Q2 2025 visit results, when viewed against the backdrop of recent earnings reports, tell a more nuanced story. Rather than succumbing to headwinds, these brands are leveraging strategies from expansion to experiential retail – to weather the storm and position themselves for long-term growth.
DICK’S Sporting Goods provides a case study in mitigating traffic declines through higher ticket sizes, digital acceleration, and a pivot toward destination retail. In Q2 2025, overall visits to the company’s flagship chain declined -5.3% YoY and same-store visits fell -4.5%. Monthly performance was volatile: February and June saw the steepest visit gaps – driven partly by calendar effects (February vs. leap year, June 2025 with one fewer Saturday) and compounded by disruptive weather in both months, from winter storms in February to record heat and flooding in the Northeast in June. Meanwhile, as shown in the graph below, foot traffic in March, May, and July was just below 2024 levels.
Despite these ongoing foot traffic headwinds, DICK'S delivered impressive comp sales last quarter, driven by a 3.7% increase in average ticket size and a 0.8% uptick in total transaction – with e-commerce outpacing overall company growth. The company is also taking proactive steps to shore up its brick-and-mortar appeal, expanding its experiential House of Sport and Field House concepts to make its stores destinations in their own rights. And DICK’s recent Foot Locker acquisition appears to serve the same strategy, leaning into categories where in-person trial and discovery are central to purchase decisions.
Academy Sports + Outdoors also saw same-store visit declines in Q2 2025 (-5.1%), with similar calendar and weather-driven monthly variations. But thanks to strategic fleet expansion, overall quarterly traffic remained relatively stable (-0.9% YoY), with monthly visits even exceeding 2024 levels in May and then again in July.
Online sales (about 10% of the company’s business) also rose 10.2% during the company’s fiscal Q1 (ending May 3rd, 2025), helping offset in-store sales dips and contributing to a 3.7% YoY decline in comps. Academy’s balanced strategy of combining physical expansion with e-commerce strength is enabling the chain to maintain momentum even in a tougher environment.
While Academy widened its guidance range last quarter to reflect macroeconomic risks such as tariff impacts, its continued expansion signals confidence in its long-term trajectory.
Premium athletic retailer lululemon athletica also continues to face consistently lower same-store visits compared to 2024, with overall visits only moderately better.
Like its peers, the brand’s strength lies beyond foot traffic. Growth in direct-to-consumer (DTC) and digital channels paired with higher transaction values allowed lululemon to deliver Americas comps of -2.0% YoY last quarter – a modest decline given traffic headwinds. At the same time, lululemon is expanding its fleet and accelerating international growth, adding further levers for resilience.
Still, the brand’s challenge is clear: to reignite in-store demand by ensuring its locations serve as premium destinations that justify return visits, especially as competition in athleisure intensifies.
Discretionary pullbacks are weighing on athletic retail in 2025. But a closer look at visit data reveals how leading players are adapting.
DICK’S is thriving via ticket growth and digital acceleration, while seeding future trips with its House of Sport/Field House rollout. Academy Sports kept overall visits nearly flat despite a 5.1% same-store traffic dip by leaning into strategic expansion – while also cultivating double-digit online growth. Lululemon has faced the steepest foot traffic drag, but higher transaction values and a bigger DTC mix helped keep domestic (Americas) comps only slightly negative last quarter as the company continues expanding its fleet and growing internationally.
Still, foot traffic remains a critical pillar of long-term growth. Heading into the holiday season, a key test will be whether these retailers can reverse recent visitation trends and draw more consumers back into stores.
Visit Placer.ai/anchor for the latest data-driven retail insights.
Traffic to wholesale clubs is on the rise, with Q2 2025 visits to Costco, BJ's Wholesale Club, and Sam's Club up 3.2%, 5.0%, and 1.6%, respectively, compared to Q2 2024. Same-store visits also increased slightly, with 1.2%, 1.3%, and 1.7% same-store visit growth for Costco, BJ's Wholesale Club, and Sam's Club, respectively.
Last year, Costco and BJ's drove growth through expansion while Sam's Club focused on increasing visits to its existing store fleet. But the Walmart-owned wholesale club is now beginning to expand as well. How might this strategic shift impact traffic to the segment? We dove into the data to find out.
BJ's (BJ) and Costco (COST) are leaning on expansions to drive visit growth, with overall traffic to both chains growing faster than same-store visits, as seen in the chart below. And even with the increased store count, same-store visits to the chains are largely positive – indicating that new stores are not cannibalizing shoppers from existing locations, and that the consumer appetite for membership-based wholesale clubs remains strong.
The companies' traffic growth followed similar trajectories in the first half of 2025: Costco posted slightly stronger numbers in Q1 for both overall and same-store visits, while BJ's outperformed in Q2. July's results reflected this parallel trajectory, with BJ's achieving stronger overall traffic growth (4.7% vs. 3.2%) and Costco seeing better same-store performance (1.9% vs. 1.0%).
While Costco and BJ's expand aggressively, Sam's Club (WMT) has (so far) emphasized store optimization over growth, reflected in the close correlation between overall and same-store visit trends in the chart below. Despite this restrained growth strategy, the Walmart-owned banner has sustained positive year-over-year traffic throughout most of 2025 – demonstrating strong organic growth at existing locations.
Now, the chain appears to be taking a page out of its competitors' expansion strategy book. The company had initiated its strategic pivot in early 2023, with plans to open 30 new stores – but Walmart recently shared plans for a more aggressive expansion of 15 new clubs a year on top of the 30 locations initially announced. With this new strategy, Sam's Club appears to be embracing the expansion-driven growth model that has proven successful for its competitors.
Diving into the visit share distribution between the three analyzed wholesale chains by DMA sheds light on the potential impact of Sam's Club's expansion on the wider wholesale club segment.
Costco and Sam's Club are the larger of the three players: In July 2025, 54.3% of combined visits to the three wholesale clubs went to Costco, and 36.0% went to Sam's Club. (The remaining 9.7% of visits went to BJ's Wholesale Club.)
The maps below shows each chain's regional visit share (by DMA) and highlights the geographic segmentation in the space, which has historically allowed each chain to maintain strong regional footholds with limited direct competition. Costco dominates the West, Sam's Club enjoys the majority visit share in much of the Midwest and South, and BJ's Wholesale Club is popular in the northeast.
But now, as the three chains are expanding beyond their traditional strongholds, the industry may see increased competition for local market share. A new Sam's Club store is slated to open in Arizona where Costco controlled 67.3% of the combined visit share as of July 2025, while a new Costco store recently opened in Texas, where 63.0% of the combined visit share in July 2025 went to Sam's Club. BJ's has also announced plans to expand into Texas and grow its fleet in several other southern states.
As these chains venture beyond their historical strongholds, success will hinge on each operator's ability to adapt their proven regional strategies to new demographics while securing optimal locations before competitors.
For more data-driven retail insights, visit placer.ai/anchor.
Kohl's (KSS) brick-and-mortar stores continue to play in the company's overall business strategy. During the company's first fiscal quarter (ending May 3rd, 2025), in-store comparable sales declined 2.6% year-over-year – aligning closely with the 2.8% same-store visit decline between February and April 2025 – while digital sales fell 7.7%. And while the visit gap has widened slightly since – between May and July 2025, same-store visits declined 3.4% YoY – in-store traffic trends continue to outperform Kohl’s full-year guidance, which anticipated a 4.0% to 6.0% drop in comparable store sales.
The recent softness can be partially attributed to a sector-wide slowdown in June retail traffic, as shoppers who had pulled forward purchases to avoid anticipated tariff-driven price hikes reduced their shopping activity in June. The wider macroeconomic uncertainty also appears to be hitting mid-market discretionary retailers like Kohl's particularly hard, as many middle-income shoppers continue to trade down to value-forward chains and high-income shoppers gravitate to luxury brands.
Macy's (M) reported a 2.0% YoY decline in comparable sales on an owned basis for its first quarter of 2025 (ending May 3rd 2025) – consistent with the 2.2% YoY decline in combined same-store visits at its three major banners (Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Bluemercury) between February and April 2025.
Like for Kohl's, Macy's same-store visit gap widened in recent months, with combined visits to the three banners down 4.0% YoY between May and July 2025. The company's namesake banner, Macy's, saw the largest traffic declines, while visits to its luxury banners Bloomingdale's and Bluemercury generally increased YoY between May and July 2025. This likely reflects the different economic pressures facing visitors to the Macy's brand: The chain serves a more budget-conscious demographic, with a median household income of $87.7K in H1 2025 in its trade areas, while Bloomingdale's and Bluemercury attract higher-income shoppers with median household incomes of $126.5K and $123.0K, respectively.
This divergence highlights how economic uncertainty is creating a tale of two retails – where luxury resilience and mass market vulnerability are impacting competitive dynamics across Macy's portfolio as well as in the wider retail space.
The softer visit trends at Kohl's and the performance gap between Macy's luxury banners and its namesake brand highlights the challenges faced by mid-market discretionary banners in 2025. As discretionary spending continues to face pressure, retailers serving the middle market may need to adapt their strategies to compete for increasingly budget-conscious consumers.
To see up-to-date department store visit trends, try Placer's free Industry Trends tool.
While consumer confidence has rebounded slightly in July, many customers are still prioritizing value-centric retail. And perhaps driven by this continued focus on value, off-price apparel chains Burlington (BURL), Ross Dress for Less (ROST), and Citi Trends (CTRN) generally experienced foot traffic and loyalty growth between April and July 2025, an encouraging metric as the critical back-to-school season ramps up.
Overall visits to Burlington, Ross, and Citi Trends increased YoY in Q2 2025 as value-forward chains continue to benefit from shoppers' increasingly budget-conscious preferences.
Burlington saw the largest increase in overall growth (+8.0% YoY), driven in part by the company's ambitious expansion plan for 2025. Ross also added new stores in 2025, helping drive a 5.8% increase in overall visits. And Citi Trends succeeded in boosting visits 4.1% YoY while maintaining a similar sized fleet.
Citi Trends' capacity to drive growth without expansion comes across when comparing the three chains' same-store visit trends. Citi Trends led with a 4.7% growth YoY, followed by Ross and Burlington which also enjoyed elevated visits, at 3.6% and 2.5%, respectively, compared to 2024.
Monthly visits showed similar growth patterns – and although traffic trends softened in June, likely driven by the retail correction following April and May’s pull-forward of demand, visits rebounded quickly the following month.
The recent increases in visits are not just due to expansions or to the acquisition of new customers. The rates of returning visitors in 2025 are higher than they were at the same periods of 2024, indicating that off-price retailers are strengthening their domination over the brick-and-mortar apparel space.
The increase in visitor frequency is likely driven by a combination of today's shoppers' extreme value orientation – with some consumers likely trading down from traditional apparel – and by the treasure hunt experience created by these chains. Shoppers know that the inventory can change significantly from week to week, which incentivizes frequent trips.
Ross in particular appears to excel in attracting high shares of repeat visitors, perhaps thanks to the relatively high median household income in the chain's trade area ($73.0K compared to $68.6K for Burlington and $47.8K for Citi Trends). This could mean that Ross's visitors have a larger discretionary budget to spend on affordable luxuries – such as off-price apparel.
The three off-price retailers continue to thrive, driven by high rates of loyal visitors and store expansions. Will visits continue to grow through back-to-school and into the holiday season?
For the latest data-driven foot traffic insights, visit Placer.ai/anchor.
The home improvement segment continues to face challenges in 2025, but a deeper look into the data for Home Depot and Lowe's reveals a nuanced story of sector-wide headwinds, divergent brand performances, and potential signs of recovery.
Existing-home sales, which can often serve as a powerful indicator for how the home improvement retail sector may behave, are at some of their lowest rates in years. This housing market softness has translated into lowered consumer activity at project-driven stores like The Home Depot. Visits to the home improvement chain were down by -3.9% YoY in Q1 2025 before moderating to a 2.2% decline in Q2.
Monthly visit data offers a more granular view of Home Depot's performance. Despite a sharp YoY decline of 9.2% in February – likely due to inclement weather and the leap year comparison – visits recovered quickly. By July, foot traffic was down by just 2.5% YoY.
These trends point to a cautious stabilization, perhaps driven by shifting economic realities. With home equities up roughly 6% YoY and over half of U.S. homes at least 40 years old, homeowners are undertaking necessary repairs – and Home Depot's status as a contractor hub may help boost visits as economic concerns cool. The company is also leaning into its strengths and driving sales through other channels, such as its B2B offerings, helping position it for growth as market conditions improve.
Lowe's also faced a challenging first half of 2025, with foot traffic trends mirroring the broader home improvement sector's struggles. Quarterly visits declined by 3.7% in Q1 and 3.8% in Q2 on a year-over-year (YoY) basis, reflecting persistent pressure on consumer spending. But visit gaps narrowed by the end of Q2, and by July 2025 were just 1.1% lower than in July 2024.
Like Home Depot, Lowe's was likely impacted by the economic uncertainties and a slower housing market. But unlike Home Depot, Lowe’s still relies on DIYers for the majority of its business. Executives blamed unfavorable weather for pushing back the spring home improvement season, which led to softer DIY performance at Lowe’s in their first fiscal quarter (ending May 2nd 2025) and may have contributed to Lowe's underperformance relative to Home Depot.
Drilling down into regional foot traffic trends for Home Depot and Lowe’s in July reveals that success in the home improvement sector in 2025 is highly localized. Even during the recent challenging period, both chains experienced pockets of YoY visit growth, particularly clustered in parts of the Midwest and Southeast. For Home Depot, traffic trends were strongest in North Dakota, where YoY visits grew by 7.6% – but visit growth was clustered throughout the region. Lowe’s also enjoyed visit growth across several states, with its strongest performance centered in Midwestern states like Indiana (+4.4%) and Kentucky (+2.8%).
These geographic patterns highlight how demand in the home improvement segment shows significant variance by market, with both chains appearing to benefit in areas with steadier home sales. This is a reminder that, while nationwide visits are lower than in previous years, pockets of strong local demand can still provide a significant boost for each brand.
Moving forward, the home improvement segment has plenty of ways to adapt to a softening economic environment and slowing home sales. Will home improvement visits pick up? Or will housing market challenges continue to spill over to foot traffic?
Visit Placer.ai/anchor for the latest data-driven retail insights.
.avif)
It’s been decades since the U.S. last hosted the World Cup, and anticipation continues to build. While the matches themselves will deliver thrilling moments for fans inside the stadium, a far broader audience is expected to engage from beyond the gates – gathering at bars, watch parties, and living rooms across the country.
Drawing on insights from recent sporting and cultural events, this analysis examines how the World Cup may impact consumer behavior and audiences across stadiums, host cities, and nationwide.
In 2025, MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ hosted a wide range of concerts and sporting events. And an examination of three – Kendrick Lamar & SZA’s tour stop, the FIFA Club World Cup Final, and a Week 17 New York Jets matchup against division rivals and the Super Bowl-bound New England Patriots – reveals clear differences in audience composition across event types.
Trade area analysis showed that the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup Final drew the largest share of single visitors and the highest median household income (HHI) of the three events – a pattern that could reflect the premium tickets and travel typically associated with a quadrennial championship match.
With the 2026 World Cup elevating the level of global competition, stadiums set to host matches this summer – including MetLife – may see even more dramatic shifts in their audience relative to other events.
While spectators attending World Cup matches are likely to differ from those drawn to other events throughout the year, audience shifts are likely to occur also within the tournament itself. As the competition progresses and the stakes rise, the visitor profile at host stadiums may trend progressively higher-income, as suggested by an analysis of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA during the recent NFL season and Super Bowl.
During the Super Bowl, the stadium’s captured market median HHI surpassed that of every 49ers home game during the 2025-26 season – a pattern consistent with the event’s premium ticket pricing, national draw, and high levels of out-of-market travel.
And since the World Cup only takes place every four years, and necessitates international travel for die-hard fans, attendees are likely to be even more affluent than Super Bowl go-ers. Moreover, as the tournament reaches its later stages, each match becomes more significant and carries the potential to drive an even more affluent in-person audience.
Diving deeper into last year’s FIFA Club World Cup Final and Semifinal matches at MetLife Stadium provides further insight into the significance of the in-person audience that doesn’t make it into the stands. While FIFA generally places restrictions on tailgating, the behavior was still observed at MetLife and several other tournament venues in 2025. To put the phenomenon into perspective, location intelligence indicates that on the day of the Club World Cup final, combined visits to MetLife and its parking lots were 24.8% higher than visits to the stadium alone.
AI-powered trade area analysis further contextualizes the economic significance of this audience. During the semifinal matches, MetLife Stadium’s captured market median HHI remained nearly identical – just over $100K – with and without parking lot visitors. A similar pattern held for the Final, where median HHI for both the stadium-only and combined stadium-plus-parking visitors both rose above $115K, with the stadium-only figure only marginally higher.
This suggests that tailgaters represent a significant cohort with discretionary income to spend on the broader match-day experience, even if they opt out of spending big money on tickets.
With tailgating during the 2026 World Cup likely to remain limited due to FIFA regulations, the spending power of fans just outside the stadiums could create opportunities for alternative forms of engagement. Fan zones and other nearby hospitality events may offer effective ways to capture demand.
Nearby dining and entertainment venues are among the most accessible experiences for fans in the stadium area, and these stand to benefit significantly from elevated game-day foot traffic.
Analysis of recent FIFA Club World Cup matches reveals the impact of match-day activity on local businesses. Visitor journey data from the June 25th, 2025 matchup between Inter Milan and River Plate at Seattle’s Lumen Field, and the June 28th, 2025 meeting between Palmeiras and Botafogo at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia reveals that a significant share of stadium visitors also stopped at nearby dining and recreation venues on the day. Location intelligence also shows that, on the day of the match, each stadium-adjacent venue received a significant visit boost compared to its 2025 daily average.
This pattern underscores the potential impact of the World Cup on the surrounding commercial ecosystem. The stadium may anchor the experience, but fan engagement will likely spill into adjacent areas – creating opportunities for both organizers and local businesses. To take full advantage, restaurants and bars can position themselves as fan-friendly destinations through watch parties, extended hours, and even mobile or outdoor offerings in stadium corridors.
Previous major sporting events – including the Super Bowl – demonstrate that the impact of large-scale sporting moments often extends beyond the immediate stadium vicinity into the broader regional economy.
In the weeks leading up to the latest Super Bowl in Santa Clara, CA on February 8th, 2026, both the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkley and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara CBSAs saw a notable uptick in year-over-year dining traffic – outperforming the nationwide average. The timing suggests that early-arriving travellers combined with locals enjoying pre-event concerts and events helped fuel demand. In contrast, nationwide dining traffic saw a more pronounced lift the following week – likely tied to Valentine’s Day on February 14.
This pattern indicates that regions hosting – or located near – World Cup 2026 matches could experience similar pre-event dining tailwinds. As out-of-town visitors arrive and local engagement builds in the days and weeks leading up to key matches, restaurants and hospitality may benefit from elevated demand – particularly when supported by ancillary events and fan experiences.
Other recent examples suggest that cities hosting major events like the World Cup stand to benefit from an influx of out-of-town visitors – particularly those with higher spending power.
Since the beginning of 2025, New Orleans has hosted a series of popular events that drove significant non-local traffic. AI-powered trade area data indicates that during these periods, out-of-market visitors consistently exhibited a higher median HHI than both local residents and typical commuters into the city.
As expected, the 2025 Super Bowl generated the most pronounced spike in out-of-market visitor median HHI among the events analyzed, but the pattern extends beyond one-time spectacles. Recurring events like Mardi Gras and major music festivals also attracted high-income visitors to the city – likely benefitting the local hospitality, dining, and retail industries.
Looking ahead to the 2026 World Cup, host cities are likely to experience a similar dynamic. The tournament’s global draw will likely bring affluent travelers with discretionary dollars to the host regions – visitors that will spend not only on match tickets, but also on accommodation, dining, and shopping. By sponsoring tournament-related festivals, concerts, and experiences in or near retail corridors, cities can amplify the economic impact of the World Cup beyond the stadium.
The impact of the 2026 World Cup is unlikely to be confined to the select cities hosting matches. Major sporting events drive large-scale at-home viewership, generating ripple effects nationwide.
The Super Bowl offers a useful benchmark. In the days leading up to February 8th, 2026, visits to grocery stores and pizza chains rose above day-of-week averages for 2025, ultimately peaking on the day of the big game day as households appeared to pick up last-minute fixings and takeout for their watch parties.
This pattern indicates that the World Cup – with its extended schedule and multiple high-stakes matchups – could drive repeated waves of elevated grocery and take-out demand as fans gather together throughout the tournament.
Of course, at-home viewing is just one piece of the match-day equation. Many fans opt for a more communal experience – gathering at sports bars across the country to watch the game alongside fellow supporters.
Recent highly-anticipated soccer matches offer a clear signal of this behavior. During the recent Allstate Continental Clásico, MLS Cup Final, and SheBelieves Cup Final, top sports bars in key markets like Los Angeles and Miami recorded visit spikes above day-of-week averages.
Not every World Cup fan will be able to attend in-person or travel to a host city, but previous match-day lifts in sports bar traffic demonstrate that fans nationwide will participate in the tournament experience.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is set to engage a wide spectrum of fans – from casual viewers at home to dedicated supporters traveling to stadiums – shaping how and where demand emerges.
As a result, the tournament’s impact will be felt across multiple layers of retail, dining, and tourism. Stadium-centered spending, activity in surrounding corridors, host-city consumer demand, and gatherings of spectators nationwide all point to a broad and interconnected World Cup effect that is likely to shape both audience composition and behavior at scale.
.avif)
Indoor malls and open-air centers have posted consistent YoY visit growth, outlet declines have been modest, and early 2026 data shows renewed momentum across all three formats.
Growth in short visits and extended stays – alongside declines in mid-length trips – shows that consumers are gravitating toward trips with a clear purpose, favoring either efficiency or immersion.
Rising dwell times and strong engagement from younger, contemporary households position indoor malls as leading destinations for longer, experience-driven trips.
A higher share of short, weekday visits – along with strong appeal among affluent families – underscores their role as convenient, essential retail hubs.
As off-price and online alternatives erode their treasure-hunt advantage and long-distance visitation softens, outlets face a strategic choice between deepening local relevance and reinvesting in destination appeal.
The malls that thrive will be those that intentionally optimize for convenience, experience, or a disciplined integration of both.
Despite economic headwinds, intensifying e-commerce competition, and fragile consumer confidence, shopping centers continue to defy the “dead mall” narrative – reinventing themselves and, in many cases, thriving.
What can location analytics tell us about the state of the mall in 2026? Which trends and audiences are driving their performance – and how can operators and retailers best capitalize on the opportunities within the category?
Over the past two years, both indoor malls and open-air shopping centers have posted consistent year-over-year (YoY) traffic growth. And while outlet malls experienced slight declines, the pullback was modest – signaling a period of stability rather than erosion.
Early 2026 data also points to continued momentum, with all three mall formats recording mid-single-digit YoY traffic gains in the first two months of the year. Although it’s still early days – and YoY comparisons in 2026 were boosted by an additional Saturday – the positive start suggests that the industry is entering the year on a solid footing.
With e-commerce always within reach, hybrid work anchoring more consumers at home, and ongoing economic uncertainty influencing spending decisions, trips to physical stores are becoming more intentional. Shopping center visit data reflects this shift as well, with growth in both quick convenience visits and extended experiential outings – alongside a decline in mid-length trips.
In 2025, quick trips (under 30 minutes) increased across all formats, underscoring malls’ growing role as convenient, high-utility destinations for picking up an online order, grabbing a quick bite, or making a targeted purchase. At the same time, extended visits of more than 75 minutes increased at indoor malls and open-air centers, reflecting sustained appetite for immersive, experiential outings.
Meanwhile, mid-length visits (between 30 and 75 minutes) lagged across formats – falling indoor malls and outlet malls and remaining flat at open-air centers – suggesting shoppers are losing patience with undifferentiated trips that lack a clear purpose.
Still, although short visits increased year over year across all mall types, and long visits increased for both indoor malls and open-air centers, the distribution of dwell time varies by format. Short visits make up a larger share of traffic at open-air shopping centers, for example, while longer visits account for a greater share at indoor malls. This divergence underscores the need for format-specific strategies, with operators clearly defining the core shoppers and missions they are best suited to serve and aligning tenant mix, amenities, and marketing accordingly.
Indoor malls, for instance, have increasingly positioned themselves as experiential hubs – particularly for younger consumers. Recent survey data shows that 57% of shoppers aged 18 to 34 report visiting a mall frequently or often, and they are more likely than older cohorts to arrive without a specific purchase in mind.
Foot traffic patterns reinforce this experiential appeal. In 2025, 37.6% of indoor mall visits lasted more than 75 minutes, compared to 33.4% for open-air centers and 34.6% for outlets. Indoor malls also captured the largest share of visits from the young-skewing “contemporary households” segment – singles, non-family households, and young couples without children – indicating strong resonance with younger audiences.
As indoor malls expand their experiential offerings, visit durations are rising even further – even as they hold steady or even slightly decline at other formats. For operators, this shift highlights a significant opportunity for indoor malls to deepen their role as climate-controlled third places. And for brands, it means high-impact access to Gen Z consumers in discovery mode – top-of-funnel engagement that is increasingly difficult and expensive to replicate through digital channels alone.
If indoor malls excel at capturing extended, social visits, open-air centers are finding success through convenience. In 2025, open-air centers had the highest shares of both weekday visits (64.0%) and short, sub-30 minutes (36.8%) among the three formats. Grocery anchors, superstores, and essential-service tenants like gyms – more common at open-air centers than at other formats – help drive steady, non-discretionary traffic.
Demographically, open-air centers drew the highest share of affluent families, a key demographic for daily errands. This alignment with higher-income households, combined with weekday consistency, positions open-air centers as reliable errand hubs embedded in community life.
Outlet malls, for their part, have historically differentiated themselves by offering something shoppers couldn’t find elsewhere: an experiential treasure hunt featuring brand-name merchandise at compelling prices. But the decline in long visits shown above suggests that this positioning may be coming under pressure – likely from the rise of off-price and discount chains as well as other low-cost, convenient treasure-hunt alternatives like thrift stores. When shoppers can score attractive deals online or browse for bargains at a nearby T.J. Maxx or Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, the incentive to dedicate time and travel to an outlet trip may no longer feel as compelling – especially for outlet malls’ core audience, which includes meaningful contingents of middle and lower-income consumers with families.
And data points to a subtle but steady erosion in the share of visitors willing to go the extra mile to visit outlet malls. Since 2023, the share of outlet visits from consumers traveling more than 30 miles has slipped from 33.1% to 31.8%, even as long-distance visits to other mall formats have remained relatively stable. This softening of destination demand may be contributing to outlets’ recent traffic lags.
Still, despite these lags in foot traffic, major outlet companies continue to see YoY increases in same-center tenant sales per square foot. The format’s strong visit start to 2026 also suggests that outlets still have significant draw – and that with the right strategy, they could reinvigorate their traffic trends.
One option is for outlet malls to lean further into their immediate trade areas: Nearly 20% of visits to outlets already originate within five miles – a share that edged up from 19.4% in 2023 to 19.9% in 2025. These closer shoppers may be largely responsible for the segment’s rise in short visits, pointing to an opportunity to further augment BOPIS offerings and select essential-use tenants.
Another option is to strengthen outlets’ destination appeal with distinctive retail, dining, and experiential offerings that resonate with value-oriented, larger-household shoppers. But whether they focus on convenience or on justifying the journey – or attempt to balance both – success will depend on identifying who their shoppers are and which missions they are best positioned to own.
As in other areas of retail, shopping center success increasingly depends on strategic clarity. The malls that thrive will be those that clearly define their role in their customers’ lives and execute against it with intention – whether by decisively optimizing for efficiency, fully investing in experience, or thoughtfully integrating both.
Commercial real estate in 2026 is characterized by differentiated performance across markets and asset types. Office recovery trajectories vary meaningfully by metro, retail performance reflects format-specific resilience, and domestic migration patterns continue to influence long-term demand fundamentals.
Many higher-income metros continue to trail 2019 benchmarks but drive the strongest Year-over-year gains, signaling a potential inflection in office utilization trends.
• Sunbelt markets along with New York, NY are closest to pre-pandemic office visit levels, while many coastal gateway and tech-heavy markets trail 2019 benchmarks.
• Many of the metros still furthest below pre-pandemic levels are now posting the strongest year-over-year gains.
• Leasing velocity may accelerate in coastal markets – particularly in high-quality assets – even if full recovery remains distant. The expansion of AI-driven firms and innovation-focused employers could support incremental demand in these ecosystems, reinforcing a bifurcation between top-tier buildings and the broader office inventory.
• Higher-income metros such as San Francisco show deeper structural gaps vs 2019, perhaps due to their higher concentration of hybrid-eligible workers – yet those same metros are driving the strongest YoY recovery in 2025.
• Accelerating growth in 2025 suggests that shifting employer policies, workplace enhancements, or broader labor dynamics may be beginning to drive increased in-office activity.
• Office performance in higher-income markets will increasingly depend on workplace quality and policy alignment. Assets that support premium amenities, modern design, and tenants implementing clear in-office expectations are likely to influence sustained office visits and leasing velocity in these metros.
Retail traffic is broadly improving across states, though performance varies by region and format.
• Retail traffic growth is broad-based, with the majority of states showing year-over-year gains in shopping center traffic in 2025.
• Still, even as many states are posting gains, pockets of softer performance remain – specifically in parts of the Southeast and Midwest.
• Broad-based traffic gains indicate consumer demand is more durable than anticipated. In growth states, operators can shift from defensive stabilization to capturing upside – pushing rents, upgrading tenant quality, and accelerating leasing while momentum holds. In softer markets, the focus should remain on protecting traffic through strong anchors and necessity-driven tenancy.
• Convenience-oriented formats are leading traffic growth, with strip/convenience centers materially outperforming all other shopping center types, and neighborhood and community centers also posting gains. This reinforces the strength of proximity-driven, daily-needs retail.
• Destination retail formats, including regional malls and factory outlets, continue to lag, while super-regional malls were essentially flat. Larger-format, discretionary-driven centers are not capturing the same momentum as convenience-based formats.
• The data suggests that consumer behavior continues to favor convenience, frequency, and necessity over destination-based shopping. Operators should lean into service-oriented and daily-needs tenancy in strip and neighborhood formats, while mall operators may need to further reposition assets toward experiential, mixed-use, or non-retail uses to stabilize traffic.
Domestic migration continues to reshape state-level demand, with gains clustering in select growth corridors.
• Domestic migration drove population gains in parts of the Southeast and Northern Plains, while several Western and Northeastern states show flat or negative migration.
• Some previously strong in-migration states in the South and West, including Texas and Utah, are showing softer movement, while other established migration leaders such as Florida and the Carolinas continue to attract net inbound residents.
• Migration flows are shifting relative to prior years. Operators should temper growth assumptions in states where inflows are slowing and prioritize markets where inbound demand remains strong.
• Florida dominates metro-level migration growth, with eight of the top ten U.S. metros for net domestic migration are in Florida.
• The markets with the strongest domestic migration-driven population gains are not major gateway cities but smaller, often retirement- or lifestyle-oriented metros, suggesting that migration-driven demand is increasingly flowing to secondary markets.
• CRE operators should prioritize expansion, leasing, and site selection in high-growth secondary metros where population inflows can directly translate into retail spending, housing absorption, and service demand.
