CORONAVIRUS - MASSIVE SALES FAIL TO TEMPT WARY SHOPPERS AS MALLS REOPEN

Cyprus Mail 9 June 2020 - by Jonathan Shkurko

Shoppers at the Mall of Cyprus on Tuesday (Christos Theodorides)

With the third round of relaxations of measures against the spread of coronavirus now in force, malls in Cyprus reopened their doors to the public on Tuesday.

However, despite almost every store now offering massive sales to unload stocks of unsold items after months of inactivity, not many people ventured to the Mall of Cyprus in Nicosia.

“Most customers I spoke to told me it took them some courage to actually come to the mall today, so I assume that’s the general feeling for most people,” said Maria, a shop assistant at Aldo.

“I hope we’ll pick up the pace soon though. I will be honest, I expected many more people today, maybe more will come over the weekend, but I’m not so sure anymore.”

In terms of safety, every employee at the mall has to wear face masks and gloves for precaution and all stores, depending on their size, only allow a limited number of customers in for shopping.

Electronic store Public, one of biggest ones in the mall in terms of size, is allowing a maximum of 100 people at a time.

“It’s necessary, we have to respect the guidelines set by the ministry of health, although we cannot force customers to wear masks and gloves,” said Giorgos, a manager at Public, who also added he expected a low customer turnout.

The Public store at the Mall of Cyprus (Jonathan Shkurko)

“Some people might not have a lot of money to spend in this period. We all made sacrifices in the past months, I think shopping might not exactly be a priority right now,” he said.

Some employees were still unpacking and stocking items on shelves in their stores on Tuesday, like Andreas who works at Flying Tiger.

“We are obviously happy to have reopened, but I think the situation should have been dealt in a different way,” he said.

“They should have let us open way earlier, as soon as shops were allowed to reopen. Now we have so much to do, like unpack boxes, restock shelves and clean. Customers don’t want to see that when they walk into a store, but unfortunately we had no choice, we were closed for such a long time.”

Unlike store employees, most customers were not wearing masks and gloves at the mall on Tuesday. Nevertheless, they all have their temperatures taken before entering the premises.

“I don’t feel the need to wear them,” said 20-year-old Loucas, a customer at InterSport. “We have had very few cases in Cyprus lately and everything is sanitised here at the mall, so I don’t think we really need to wear masks and gloves, it’s too much.”

However, not everyone agreed. Rita, for example, was still not at ease while strolling around the mall with her son in the pram.

“When everything was closed and we were in lockdown, I wanted to come to the mall so badly,” she said.

“Now I admit I feel a bit weird, like I’m doing something I’m not allowed to do. I guess it will take me some time to fell comfortable and safe in public places again, but for a while I think I will limit my outings, at least until we have zero cases for more five or six consecutive days.”