Trafford Centre owner unveils indoor mapping and deals app

Intu, the UK's largest listed shopping centre operator in the UK, is rolling out a new app that sends offers to customers’ mobile phones based on their location.

Users will be able to see their location as a blue dot on a digital map of the shopping centre, plan a route between stores and see which retailers along their path are offering deals.

"This could change the retail environment," said Karen Harris, managing director of Intu Digital. "It has phenomenal added value for customers and allows retailers to control revenue figures more than they could ever could before."

A retailer that notices slow sales on a certain day would be able to send a offer immediately to app users walking by the store, encouraging people to enter the shop and spend money.

The FTSE 100 company – which operates nine of the UK's top 20 retail destinations, including the Trafford Centre and Lakeside – hopes the app will help visitors discover stores that they would not usually visit and spend longer in the shopping centre.

Last year, shoppers spent £5.5bn across Intu's malls and spent an average of 100 minutes each at the shopping centre. That translates to an additional £55m of retail spend for every extra minute consumers stay at the complex.

"Footfall is difficult to shift in a big way, but you can affect dwell time, which has a big impact on turnover and frequency of visits," Ms Harris said.

"We could send an offer for a free cupcake and coffee to people who have been there for one and a half hours, so they would be encouraged to stick around and spend more."

Future versions of the app could also include a "find my car" feature.

Although similar technology exists on Android, "it’s been impossible to do this on an iPhone to date," Ms Harris said, adding that the company has been working with Apple on the project.

"We are the first shopping centre group to have created indoor mapping on iOS."

Unlike previous attempts to capture shoppers' attention via their mobile devices using beacons that transmit messages to a user's phone when it is near enough to pick up Bluetooth signal, Intu's app connects over WiFi and does not send intrusive notifications.

Physical retailers have been grappling with ways to capture consumer spend, which is swiftly moving online.

Ms Harris believes Intu is "joining the dots between the physical and digital shopping experience" and that this omni-channel strategy will help retailers "reach a far wider audience than through a bricks and mortar only approach".

The app, which will be unveiled today at the British Council of Shopping Centres’ annual retail real estate event, will be available on iOS and Android following a trial phase during several student events at Intu centres across the country.