Top-tier malls throughout the U.S. are drawing back customers, according to Placer.ai’s Mall Index, which analyzes data on a list of more than 50 urban and suburban malls. Placer.ai selected the 50 properties for the index to form a pool of high-performing malls representative of the U.S. Class A mall sector. Placer.ai’s artificial intelligence and machine learning system processes anonymized location information from consumers’ devices to estimate overall visits to specific locations.

February 2020’s weather drove visits down, but year-over-year foot traffic otherwise has been trending upward since November 2020, when foot traffic was down 42.3 percent from November 2019. Most recently, visits to top malls surged 86 percent year over year in March 2021, said Placer.ai marketing vice president Ethan Chernofsky. “While this number is indeed impressive, it is also a very limited indicator, as much of these same malls were already closed by mid-month in 2020.”

Thus, it’s helpful to see that traffic at these properties also has increased from 2019 to 2021. Visits to the same malls decreased only 23.9 percent from March 2019 to March 2021. That’s the lowest gap since the pandemic began. It’s also worth noting that visits to these properties have jumped 25.7 percent from January 2021 to March 2021.

“Their continued capacity to rebound quickly when given the opportunity speaks to the continued strength in the sector and explains why the format still deserves its lofty position within the retail landscape,” Chernofsky said.