Shopping malls

Products / Shopping malls

Shopping malls struggle with several different challenges when it comes to air quality. They are often crowded, resulting in a faster spread of viruses and bacteria, which became apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Outdoor pollution often spreads into shopping malls through entrances and loading docks, affecting indoor air quality of the facility. There’s also the issue of visitors smoking outside of the entrances due to lack of smoking areas inside the mall. This leads to tobacco smoke spreading into the facility and cigarette ends littering the entrances and the surrounding sidewalks. No smoking areas indoors can also lead to loss in revenue, lower productivity and security issues. Thankfully, there are great solutions to all of these challenges.

Challenges

One of the biggest air-related challenges that shopping malls face is cigarette smoke, and there should be a solution in place to avoid guests and staff smoking outside of the entrances. Not having a solution leads to tobacco smoke spreading into the facility and exposing non-smokers to secondhand smoke, odors lingering in and around the entrances, and cigarette ends littering the ground. This creates an unhealthy and unpleasant environment for non-smokers and negatively affects the overall impression of the shopping mall, which in turn can lead to a loss of revenue. Also, not accomodating smokers within the facility will most likely lead to less time in commercial areas and loss of revenue. Additionally, when staff needs to get to inconvenient smoking areas, their smoke breaks become unnecessarily long, which decreases productivity. If they have to use the staff entrance to get to the designated smoking area, there is an increased security risk as well.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the serious consequences of poor ventilation became very apparent. Poor ventilation means an increased risk of bacteria and viruses spreading, especially in crowded environments such as shopping malls.

Benefits

These challenges can be easily solved with the right solution for your specific facility. For the smoking-related challenges, there are several options to choose from. For indoor smoking, we would recommend using one of our indoor smoking cabins, for example, the SF 6000 X, SF Forum and for an outdoor smoking solution we would recommend our Outdoor Lounge. Both the SF 6000 X and the Outdoor Lounge capture the smoke before it is able to spread, protecting non-smokers from secondhand smoke. All of our smoking cabins are equipped with our patented fireproof ash handling system, reducing the littering of cigarette ends.

For challenges regarding viruses and bacteria, we would recommend one of our air cleaners with HEPA 14-filters since they are specifically designed to reduce the levels of viruses and bacteria in the air.