Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The mall business in DKI Jakarta is truly bloody with the Covid-19 pandemic. All restrictions during pandemic control have made business worse off. Visitors are quiet, making tenants affected, in the end there are problems with rental fees, finally there is a manager who waives the temporary rental fee.
Ellen Hidayat, chairman of the Association of Indonesian Shopping Centers for DKI Jakarta, was outspoken about the difficulties of managing a shopping center in the midst of a pandemic.
Although the mall is allowed to remain open at this time, visitors who come are still quiet. The policy of not eating in place or dine in at restaurants has a significant effect on the interest of visitors to the mall.
“So it also affects other tenants who are not food and drink, where it is known that so far for the mall, people come to the mall, visitors to the mall besides shopping actually also want to do dine in,” he said to CNBC Indonesia, Friday (16/10/20).
He emphasized that for food and beverage tenants in malls, it is not easy to attract customers who want to order take away because there was a ban on eating on the spot. If there is, the number is so small that they choose to close.
“So it turned out at the time dine in not allowed to eat on the spot, only allowed take away and it turns out that there is indeed a large majority and even a majority dine in it’s hard to do delivery or take away. So that all 95% of the restaurants that are dine-in, close temporarily and it has a very broad impact, “he said.
Under these conditions, the impact to mall visits is significant. It is said that mall traffic is so low that it only reaches between 15% to 20% that at the time of dine in is not permitted. In fact, he emphasized that the mall is not part of the Covid-19 cluster.
“We need to convey that the shopping center in DKI is not a Covid-19 cluster. So this has frankly caused the tenants and managers of the shopping center to experience very very tough times,” he explained.
It is said, at the beginning of the pandemic period, mall managers had actually helped tenants. This is done to keep the tenants breath longer in running their business wheels.
“The policies are of course not the same, depending on the ability and readiness of shopping centers, where rental discounts and service charge discounts are generally given to tenants,” he said.
“So for shopping centers it can also be said that for the past 7 months, from the end of March until now we have helped the tenants by freeing rent, say so or discounting the rent and service charge, on average it has reached 5 months. up to 6 months of rent or service charge, “he explained.
Along the way, his party had a bright spot with the existence of a transitional PSBB before 14 September 2020. Since then, the tenants together with the mall manager have had optimism to fight together.
“But unfortunately then there is another with the tightening of the PSBB. It really makes both the shopping center and the tenants breathe very hard,” he complained.
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