Esas Gayrimenkul wins 4 MENA awards, what can AI really add to shopping mall management?

The sustainability report design won gold in Sustainability Excellence: Reporting & Governance. Sosyal Değer @Work won gold in Sustainability Excellence: Community & Social Impact. Half the haul is about reporting and social impact, not technology.

Setric is described as an AI-based platform for commercial real estate and retail management. At Retail Congress MENA 2026, a session titled “AI in Retail: Levelling Up the Operation” covered how Setric approaches mall investors and their retail partners. Esas Gayrimenkul CEO Cem Eriç says the company is putting “digital transformation with AI and sustainability at the centre of our business model.”

The report gives no ceremony date or city, no session speakers, and no word on which malls run these platforms or what they deliver. Nor does it say whether Akerio AI is a partner, investor or supplier. So we attach no result figures to either platform. We read the rest of the Turkish retail agenda the same way on our retail page.

Typical visitor analytics inputs are door counts, corridor density, flow by hour and dwell time. The news does not say which sensors or sources Visitify uses. So “which data, collected how” is a fair question for any tenant to ask.

A Setric-type layer lays footfall next to tenant turnover, the lease calendar and the campaign plan. A corridor with slipping sales per square metre, or a floor empty during a campaign, becomes visible. A person still makes the decision; the platform points at the question.

We use a similar principle. AINEO Motor places calculation engines inside business articles: the reader enters a value, and the engine turns it into a single decision output. The scale differs, but the logic matches: scattered data in, one readable decision question out.

Look at what sits on the rent table in Turkish shopping malls (AVM is the Turkish term for a mall). According to Nuri Şapkacı, chair of AYD, Türkiye’s shopping centre and retailers association, some brands are asking for one to two months of grace or deferral on rent. Whoever holds the footfall data holds the bargaining power, and a tenant without a count of their own has little to push back with.

The AYD-Akademetre mall turnover index rose 22.9% year on year in nominal terms in August 2026 but shrank 6.5% in real terms, the third month in a row of real contraction. In that setting you need to read footfall and conversion rate together to tell “are customers coming in” apart from “are they buying”.

Hourly and daily flow data shows when the mall’s joint campaigns land, so a tenant can plan shifts and discounts around them. Otherwise campaign day finds the store half-staffed and customers walk back out. For a look at how a seasonal story turns into a shelf, see K-Land’s winter skincare picks.

The Esas Properties Türkiye real estate page lists malls outside Istanbul, such as 01 Burda in Adana, 10 Burda in Balıkesir, 41 Burda in Kocaeli and 67 Burda in Zonguldak. The same page says the company runs 14 malls and more than 600,000 m² of GLA under third-party management. The news does not say where the platforms run, but their reach could extend beyond Istanbul.

A chain usually has its own door counter, POS reports and average basket tracking, so it can cross-check mall data against its own.

A boutique or cafe with no count of its own has to accept the mall’s report as it is. If that report justifies a corridor change, a new competitor or a rent rise, there is no figure to answer with. Stock sits on the shelf, and nobody shows why.

A store missing from “mall name + category” searches loses part of the traffic that reaches the mall. Keep the mall location, floor and hours consistent on your business profile.

Put your location-targeted ad dates and the mall’s campaign days on one calendar to see which days actually brought extra customers.

Yes. Any data that can identify a visitor may fall under personal data protection rules. Before you accept a data-sharing offer from the mall, ask whether the data is anonymous. Verify with the official source; this is not legal or financial advice.

Put a simple counter at the door, or count by hand hourly, and log receipts and average basket in the same sheet. After a week you will see the gap between visitors and receipts. Your conversion rate becomes your number, not the mall’s.

Ask in writing which analytics tool is used, whether data is shared by floor and corridor, and when the campaign calendar is announced. For a tenant scraping to the end of the month, that paper trail can later back an objection.

Update the mall name, floor and hours on your business profile and website store page. We build the systems that bring this data and the mall’s footfall into one dashboard as part of our AI and advertising consultancy. For the store-level side of a similar mall decision, read about D&R’s openings in Mersin and Florentia Village.

That depends on your lease and the mall’s policy. If there is no sharing clause, you can request the data in writing and raise the topic when the lease is renewed.

The news gives no measured results for these platforms. They are tools for mall management; their effect on your store depends on how much of the data is opened to you and how you use it.

Start with a simple count and till data. A month of records shows which questions need AI and which a spreadsheet answers.