Gloucester Quays
Knowing when your customers are coming in helps you to schedule staff at the right timeRichard Rawlings
Measuring shoppers in listed buildings.
Gloucester Quays is a stylish shopping center with high-street and designer brands offered at discounted prices. The center sees between 15,000 and 20,000 visitors per day, with outlet shops including Calvin Klein, GAP, and M&S, as well as restaurants such as Zizzi, TGI Friday’s, and Nando’s. Gloucester Quays is also home to a Cineworld 10 screen cinema, a gym, and the Gloucester Quays Antique Centre.
The Requirements
The whole center covers a large area with several entrance and exit points. Despite this challenge, the management had to find a way of measuring the number of people coming and going. In order to get the most accurate traffic management solution on the market, they approached CountWise.
“Measuring the footfall is always a key performance indicator for us,” said Richard Rawlings, Centre Manager. “Gloucester Quays require accurate data in the analysis of the shopping center’s performance. The footfall numbers are used in various ways for the center’s development and are a requirement for our tenants.”
A particular challenge was the fact that all the buildings in Gloucester Quays are listed, so any modifications had to be unobtrusive in order to meet the council’s requirements.
The Solution
The discreet cameras used in the CountWise system took care of both requirements in one go. Subtle and precise, the system meets the council requirements for listed buildings, while providing the center management with the most accurate traffic management data in the world.
Using a unique video imaging shape-recognition technology in the I-Count system, the management now have a true view of the shopping center’s footfall. The cameras can identify and separate human shapes and motions from the environment, and accurately identify when they are entering and exiting.
Thanks to their wide angle and innovative counting algorithm, only 11 cameras are required to cover every part of the shopping center, and to give the center management up-to-the-minute data.
The cameras, linked to sophisticated traffic management software, are placed at the car park entrances, the pedestrian entry, the food piazza and the pedestrian walkway into the antique building.
The Benefits
“We use the data to collate daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual figures,” said Richard Rawlings. “It is also used to measure footfall during specific events, in order gauge the effectiveness of certain marketing initiatives.”
The Future
“As the center develops, we will ask CountWise to develop the system to incorporate the changes,” Richard Rawlings concluded.
Gloucester Quays is just one example of how CountWise is assisting many shopping centers in the UK and around the world to monitor traffic in a consistent and accurate manner.
