As of Monday, all shops will be able to welcome customers again. All except shopping centers and department stores over 40,000 m2 in the capital such as the Forum des Halles, Galeries Lafayette Haussmann and Printemps Haussmann.
Indeed, the government had specified that at deconfinement, very large stores would need a permit from the prefecture to reopen, and that of Paris did not grant them.
One person every 10m²
However, Galeries Lafayette, for example, was already working on sanitary measures enabling them to guarantee the safety of employees and customers. His teams plan in particular “counting people at the entrance and exit to try to limit as much as possible the flow inside the store, with a ratio of one person per 10 m2”, explained Nicolas Houzé, managing director of Galeries Lafayette, on BFM Business Tuesday.
For the flagship store of the boulevard Haussmann group, which receives 80,000 visitors daily, half of whom are foreigners, this is the “double penalty” since the start of confinement, Nicolas Houzé still estimated.
The group expects a billion euros shortfall this year, that is to say half of the turnover achieved in 2019. All the more so since the return to normalcy should not take place “until the second half of 2021 in view in particular of the situation of the airlines”, of which are addicted to tourists.
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