Santa is still coming to town, but his arrival at shopping centers — and how shoppers will interact with the jolly old man — looks a lot different this year. Holiday activations like in-center trick-or-treating, pictures with Santa and the lighting of Christmas trees have driven foot traffic in years past. “Shopping centers are part of the Santa experience for many families,” said Jie Zhang, professor of marketing and Harvey Sanders Fellow of Retail Management at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. Shopping centers’ challenge in COVID-19 times is maintaining the magic of the holidays while making sure guests, retailers and families feel safe, she says.

Luckily, many centers learned lessons as they’ve run activations and events since the summer.

RELATED: 40 COVID-19-safe activations that show shopping centers’ resilience

Show off safety practices

Of utmost importance, marketing experts say, is emphasizing the safety mechanisms you are putting into play, whether mandatory masking, extra cleaning, health screenings for costumed employees, limited numbers of tickets or putting characters like Santa behind Plexiglass.

If done well, holiday promotions can be an opportunity to bring shoppers back. “A lot of people haven’t been back to the mall since it has closed,” said JLL senior vice president and director of retail properties Ashlyn Booth. “One of our goals [with the holiday activations] is to instill in customers that shopping malls are still a safe place to go. They are large. They’re open. Getting people to come back and see an event and see all the health and safety measures we have put in place at the shopping centers, we believe, will really enforce that we are looking out for our local communities.”

JLL has invested in three signature Christmas activations at properties it manages, including drive-thru trick-or-treating; a Shop and Stroll during which guests can meet elves, enjoy live music and win prizes for participating in activities at different stores; and an outdoor holiday movie night in the parking lot.  Booth believes visibility into JLL’s care about health regulations will spur guests to come back.

Many shopping centers already have experienced the benefit of talking about safety practices with consumers. When shelter-at-home restrictions previously lifted in Ohio, for instance, Fairmount Properties director of marketing Jessi Fausett and her team weren’t sure how the community would respond to in-shopping center events and activations. They dipped their feet into the water over the summer at Pinecrest, a mixed-use center near Cleveland, with four drive-in movies at which “people were really distanced.” The series sold out immediately; people booked even before they knew what movie would be offered. “It showed us that people were wanting to get out but do it in a safe way,” Fausett said.

Since then, Pinecrest has hosted a series of outdoor community events, including Toddler Tuesdays — in which families were given craft activities and their own eight-foot-diameter circle on the grass — and Fall Fest, during which families could decorate pumpkins and collect prepackaged trick-or-treat bags. Each event had a limited number of tickets, masks were required, everything was touchless, and every event sold out. “Each event has been extremely successful because there are parameters that are enforced and people feel safe,” Fausett said.

Remain flexible

It’s also important to be flexible if things don’t feel right. To control crowds, The Mall of San Juan in Puerto Rico replaced one big day of in-center trick-or-treating with five Saturdays. “Last year, we received 15,000 people during the day,” said The Mall of San Juan senior marketing and sponsorship specialist Tatiana Escalera-Vega. “This year we definitely couldn’t do that.” To add dazzle, Escalera-Vega and her team planned to have costumed employees handing out bags of candy, but at the first event, families crowded the tables to get photos with the characters. “We didn’t want people to feel unsafe, so we just eliminated that part and we focused our messaging instead to be ‘Come and pick up your candy bags’ instead of ‘Come and say hi to the characters and pick up your bags.’” It didn’t hamper the experience, Escalera-Vega says. “Some parents told us they had five different costumes to come to the mall for all five Saturdays.”

Offer omnichannel experiences

Some families feel good about posing with Santa with the right precautions, while others prefer to make new traditions at home this year. To retain loyalty, shopping centers “need to address the concerns of both groups.” Santa will visit 134 of Brookfield Properties’ more than 150 malls for photo opportunities, but he will sit behind Plexiglass. For those who want intimate virtual experiences, Brookfield Properties contracted with JingleRing. Families booking on JingleRing choose ethnicity, language, message and whether Mrs. Claus will play a part. When married couple Walter Geer and Sarah Blackman dreamed up the idea in the spring, Geer — who also owns PictureU, which provides holiday photo setups for retailers like Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops — had shopping centers in mind as partners. JingleRing has exclusive contracts with Brookfield and Tanger Outlets. “It provides a great brand benefit, showing [customers] that they are sensitive to what’s going on and that they want to keep this treasured tradition,” Geer said.

Other centers and retailers have created contactless experiences, whether for customers onsite or at home. Fox Valley Mall in Aurora, Illinois, hosted a free, interactive Virtual Haunted House. Online visitors found their way through spooky rooms from the safety of their own homes. Westfield is rolling out Holiday Hunt, an augmented reality scavenger hunt. Guests scan QR codes on their phones and can search out sights at the center like flying Santa sleighs and a virtual snowman, pictured at top. And the Outlets at San Clemente in California invited community members to watch its tree lighting either in person or livestreamed on a big screen from their cars.

Retailers, too, are getting in on the activations. At Nordstrom, customers can drop off letters for Santa while retrieving curbside pickup orders. And Sam’s Club is offering a virtual tour of Clark Griswold’s house from the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, reliving moments from the movie while shopping for holiday items. As the Sam’s Club marketing team wrote on its corporate blog, “Clark’s goal of creating perfect moments and memories for his family — for it to be greatly interrupted by things outside of his control — is basically the story of 2020.”