Leasing Strategies to Maximize Shopping Mall Revenue in Southeast Asia

In Southeast Asia’s fast-changing retail landscape, shopping malls are no longer simply a mix of retail stores. They are complex ecosystems that include food courts, wellness hubs, entertainment areas, office spaces, and even conference halls. For mall owners and property developers, this shift demands a new leasing strategy—one that considers not only tenant categories but also customer journeys, lifestyle trends, and experience design. 

Department stores and fashion brands that once served as reliable anchors are losing their edge. What matters now is the ability of tenants to drive repeat visits, increase dwell time, and create synergy with surrounding categories. In this article, we explore what forward-thinking leasing strategy looks like in today’s market, with a focus on Southeast Asia's real-world conditions and consumer behaviors. 

I. The Rise of Non-Retail Anchors  

In cities like Ho Chi Minh City, Manila, Bangkok, and Jakarta, traditional department stores are gradually being replaced by experience-led anchors—those that deliver emotional connection and repeatable reasons to visit. 

Athleisure stores, fitness concepts, interactive entertainment zones, beauty clinics, and immersive dining venues are not just optional additions—they are now performance drivers. For instance, F&B zones and wellness facilities are responsible for attracting weekday footfall, balancing traffic patterns that previously relied too heavily on weekends. These categories also bring a broader demographic mix into the mall, especially health-conscious millennials and Gen Z who view malls as social destinations, not just shopping centers. 

This shift isn’t just about replacing one tenant with another—it’s about curating ecosystems. A customer who visits a yoga studio or trampoline park in the morning may follow up with a smoothie from a café, browse through a lifestyle bookstore, and stay for a coworking session or late lunch. The more interconnected the journey, the greater the customer lifetime value. 

II. Optimizing Tenant Mix Strategy to Maximize Mall Performance 

It’s no longer sufficient to fill vacancies by category. Strategic leasing in today’s malls involves curating for synergy—where one tenant directly amplifies the performance of its neighbor. 

For example, an indoor playground located on the upper floors doesn’t just benefit the kids—it boosts footfall for adjacent tenants like toy stores, educational centers, ice cream cafés, and even parents-oriented services like salons or clinics. These patterns show that customers rarely visit one tenant in isolation. The mall becomes a chain of micro-destinations, with each link influencing time spent and money spent. 

Cross-visitation is key here. Malls that place complementary tenants next to each other—such as placing a boutique gym beside an athleisure brand and smoothie bar—create natural customer movement and encourage multi-purpose visits. 

Developers should think of leasing strategy not as filling boxes but designing a journey. Well-planned adjacencies lead to: 

• Higher sales conversion across categories 

• More efficient circulation flow 

• Greater tenant satisfaction due to shared traffic 

In Southeast Asia, especially in urban areas with high density, these thoughtful tenant relationships can make the difference between a flat visit and a high-spend experience. 

III. Understanding Regional Dynamics in Leasing 

While the broader shift to experiential leasing is global, execution in Southeast Asia is deeply localized. Understanding city-level dynamics, footfall patterns, and consumer preferences is critical to leasing success. 

• Vietnam: In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, mall podiums integrated into residential, entertainment or office towers outperform standalone malls. Retail leasing here favors brands that cater to convenience, daily routines, and rising middle-class lifestyles. Categories like F&B, beauty clinics, and enrichment centers for children have strong demand. 

• Thailand: In Bangkok and secondary cities, suburban malls thrive by offering everyday lifestyle convenience. Fitness studios, co-learning spaces, and healthcare services anchor weekday traffic. Leasing teams here often work with SMEs and local franchises, not just international brands. 

Each of these markets requires different metrics of success and levels of operational agility. A one-size-fits-all leasing strategy will fail to capture the nuances that drive success in each locality. 

IV. Monetizing Activation Zones for Footfall and Relevance 

Many malls underutilize their central halls, atriums, and public areas—reserving them only for seasonal decorations or one-off internal events. However, these spaces can be powerful leasing assets if used as activation zones. 

Leading malls in Asia are dedicating prime zones to short-term, high-impact leasing, such as: 

• Product experiential booths (tech demos, fashion previews, food sampling) 

• Youth-targeted events (esports competitions, cosplay shows, K-pop pop-ups) 

• Sports try-outs or branded interactive installations 

These activations serve as footfall magnets. By inviting in new or niche communities—fans of a gaming brand, followers of a local artist, participants in a weekend fitness challenge—malls generate buzz and reach audiences who may not otherwise visit. 

More importantly, these zones help attract younger demographics, who are increasingly immune to traditional advertising and value experiences over products. These one-off or short-term activations also offer tenants flexibility and give mall owners a way to monetize space that might otherwise sit idle. 

Done well, activation zones drive traffic, amplify tenant brands, and refresh the mall experience continuously—without long-term leasing risk. 

V. Leasing with Intelligence: New Metrics for a New Era 

To succeed in this evolved leasing landscape, mall operators must upgrade how they measure tenant performance. Gross sales per square meter, while important, no longer tells the whole story. 

Modern leasing strategies look at: 

• Footfall conversion: How many visitors enter and interact with a tenant? 

• Return frequency: How often do anchor tenant customers come back within 30–60 days? 

• Cross-tenant activation: Do neighboring tenants benefit from shared audiences? 

• Dwell time per zone: Are customers spending more time in experiential areas? 

• Age and demographic spread: Is the tenant mix attracting a balanced customer base? 

These insights often come from data sources such as heat mapping, mobile signal tracking, CRM loyalty data, and event-based feedback. The best leasing teams combine this quantitative data with qualitative insights from daily operations, seasonal behaviors, and community engagement. 

In this context, leasing becomes an iterative, data-informed process—where tenant placement, performance reviews, and even rental rates are adjusted based on live usage and emerging patterns. 

VI. Strategic Takeaways for Property Developers and Mall Owners 

To adapt leasing strategy for modern mall performance in Southeast Asia, developers and owners should prioritize: 

• Anchor experiences over anchor stores: Focus on tenants that drive emotional connection, frequent visits, and family-oriented or youth-oriented activities. 

• Category synergy over segmentation: Design the tenant mix based on journey logic, not just store types. What customers do before and after each visit matters. 

• Short-term leasing for long-term relevance: Allocate space for activations and brand experiences that bring in new demographics and refresh the mall's offering continuously. 

• Data-informed decisions: Leverage analytics to understand what works, identify underperforming zones, and customize leasing strategies across locations. 

By aligning leasing with modern customer behavior, malls can evolve into dynamic destinations with staying power.  Property developers and mall owners who embrace this new approach are not just protecting occupancy rates, they are actively shaping relevance, community connection, and long-term asset value.