Hyderabad: Safe festive offers to woo customers during Dasara

• Malls devise new strategies to increase footfalls

• Taking all SOPs to prevent spread of corona

• Innovative slot bookings to customise shopping visits

• This makes merchants to serve focussed groups

• Tying up with cab service providers to ferry customers

• Making effective service procedure at food counters

• Want to give safe festival shopping experience to all

Hyderabad: Big malls and giant cloth showrooms in the Greater Hyderabad limits are working out new strategies to beat the slump in their revenues due to the corona pandemic between Dasara and Sankranti. The mega malls are working on new ideas promising a new shopping experience to the people so that they can wean them away at least to some extent from online shopping and increase the footfalls and give a boost to their business.

The malls are introducing pre-booking slots for customers and their family members at a convenient time. All that the customers will have to do is to just click on that particular mall portal and fill the details which includes the booking of time slot and the number of family members interested to visit the mall.

In a instant response, the citizens will receive a message with OTP (one time password) and time slot will also be mentioned. Before entering the mall, the visitors will have to show the message to the security personnel.

Some chain of malls in the city have introduced this system on experimental basis and are said to be receiving good response. A senior executive of a major fashion store said that limited members will be permitted to visit the shopping mall during the festive season during busy hours in view of the corona pandemic. This would help in meeting the norm of social distancing. "Depending on the store space, not more than 30 people will be allowed to visit in a single floor at one go."

In view of SOPs in eateries at the malls, special safety measures like use of disposable material and multi counters at different places in the same premises are also being opened before the flood of festival rush.

Some more visitor-friendly schemes like opening of cab booking counters at malls with good offers like discounts on big purchases in the travel bill and special discounts for using a specific cab services are also being worked out. The mall managements are holdings talks with cab service providers to prepare a viable business formula mutual benefit in the crisis time.

To clear the piled up stocks mainly in the garments segment during last five months, offering huge discounts are also on the anvil. Some have already announced 50 per cent discounts on many brands. They are also going in for offering coupons which can be redeemed during the next visit.