Follow the air conditioning

Every summer the same line arrives in the same report: footfall is down.

It is true, and it is measured by counting people where people no longer are. On the street, at the shopfront, along the promenade that was full in March. In a Gulf June a footfall number is a thermometer. It tells you it is forty-five degrees. It tells you nothing about where the customer went.

They went where the air conditioning is.

The mall is the region's public park from June to September. A family walks it in the evening. Teenagers go because it is the only place they are allowed to go on foot. The grandparents sit. Walk one at nine on a summer night in Riyadh and there is no shortage of people. The corridor is full. The street outside is empty. The number counted the street.

And they went into the phone. The delivery apps have some of their best weeks when nobody wants to leave the house, which are the same weeks the retail plan writes off. The customer is still buying; they have stopped walking to the purchase, and the number only knew how to count walking.

Dubai understands this better than most. Around the turn of the month, as in most years, it is expected to open its summer promotion and sell three months of heat as a festival, with the malls as the venue.

I have watched retail plans answer the summer number by cutting the summer. Fewer hours, less stock, a paused campaign, a quiet three months because the street said so. Meanwhile the mall corridor at ten at night is a queue for ice cream, and the app is delivering to a family that would have walked in April.

In summer the customer follows the air conditioning. A plan that follows the footfall number is looking for the customer in the one place they have left.