Last year, we looked retrospectively in early January to see which indoor and open-air malls received the most holiday traffic in the U.S. in November-December 2022. Now, we’ll take a look to see how October traffic is shaping up at these malls compared to last year. After a fairly robust year-over-year increase for most of the indoor malls in June and July, we begin to see some signs of lagging come late summer and early fall. Valley Fair has been a strong performer the past six months. Woodfield Mall is the only indoor mall showing a strong positive inflection for October 2023 year-over-year.
We wondered if this increased variance might be related to any COVID-induced dips in prior years, so we looked at pre-pandemic traffic to compare visitation. This analysis in fact reveals that Irvine Spectrum and Westfield UTC have not only recovered from pre-COVID levels but are currently surpassing them.
Looking at the trade area comparing visitors from May-October 2019 (blue) versus May-October 2023 (red), we see that the trade area has expanded north, thus drawing from a larger population of shoppers.
![Trade Area Irvine Spectrum 2019 v 2023 11.9.23](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/62543a0ce693bb812fd46c4e/6554885900e27cfab5f88ea2_OAsjjlLqoccARajtyVb2Wfhj8IOjSfyZDEPXohkAhDqNfn7Ptvdl8RbPAThI1PmsPiGYu7DEXKMLO1cM4vNfa6Ot1FaEOhU5X7cTUztvHST_TRJIvWnTbcMuvpRvCUBSQxsgGFBHDnqSUUjBcyzvht8ucbJRcYhbLCBURAqTLzKO5lI-nwDK2sgDmzbX9HKuyUD7h-1ont2sJb1aX7qlfsl3t3K29v4zuQEME1004wfAQ6HDW2ig8A6RNJ5jv-QgLzUYmEe8K3oHO84EjBuKx3gCVYJQZG1TExhbi0wCeJAzodk7fo5OFApL%3Ds0-d-e1-ft.png)
And indeed, the trade area has increased by about 65 square miles.
![Trade Area Circles 11.9.23](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/62543a0ce693bb812fd46c4e/65548859fba18749f260871c_rBcbPbIDhiWrlUQmatLYkoJAqbergEUYrfmle8wyS-GHlfIXJtclEmK915kPcYC1YB_i_pvwmKcgpKXHNVW336Qmf4jrwP9xLe5Ll5n8lCg6pSTlkq2vFlPdggAfAhABLvBeTxPPCuWnOC8onjgtP1nSQ4E5oXtNLZNKBv4drOUUajx22_Dq3aYcxzhSGDqsywIa3-peTz_unXd24K_pIiDR3S3fr9y2lwYEFT5weEbFJA%3Ds0-d-e1-ft.png)