The Solal Marketing Conference and Awards in Budapest served as a timely reminder of where retail destinations must focus today. Beyond the awards, what distinguished the gathering was an uncompromising commitment to practicality: prioritising approaches that genuinely deliver results on the ground right now.
The event’s greatest strength was its holistic scope. Rather than treating marketing as an isolated silo, sessions brought together asset management, leasing strategy, digital systems, and day-to-day operations. The core takeaway was clear. A shopping centre succeeds only when these complementary disciplines reinforce one another.Marketing cannot compensate for an unaligned tenant mix, just as prime real estate cannot thrive without understanding who walks through the door.
This interconnected reality framed the panel tackling the industry’s central question: Twenty years ago, a shopping centre’s most valuable asset was its location. Is it customer data today?
Key take aways:
- Collaboration Over Ownership: Neither the landlord, the tenant, nor the app provider owns the customer relationship exclusively. Long-term value is unlocked only when all parties interconnect their touchpoints—from parking to the checkout—in an open, mutually beneficial ecosystem with clear commercial incentives.
- Data Has Zero Value Without Sales Impact: Having terabytes of customer data does not elevate an asset’s valuation on its own. Data is only as valuable as the measurable revenue uplift, dwell time, and tenant retention it generates.
- Experience and Trust Outweigh Raw Tech: While AI and predictive models will transform operations and campaign targeting, the primary reason people return to a destination will always remain the physical human experience, supported by uncompromised consumer trust and transparency.
