Tourists Boost Champs-Élysées Footfall as Brands Scramble for Space Before Olympics
PARIS — The Avenue des Champs-Élysées has not lost its luster, with footfall up 15 percent since last year as tourists have returned in force to the French capital.
The numbers, measured from May 2022 to June 2023, are according to a study by data platform Mytraffic and commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield released Wednesday. It is strongly boosted by the presence of Americans, who were keen to take advantage of a strong dollar exchange.
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Footfall on the famous shopping street is up 131 percent over the same period two years prior, when the city was still in the process of reopening from pandemic-era restrictions.
Luxury has boomed on the street, dominated by the big three conglomerates: LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Kering and Richemont. The conglomerates have “a stranglehold” on the upper part of the avenue closest to the Arc de Triomphe, the report noted.
On the lower part of the avenue, active brands are establishing their presence. Lululemon opened a 5,651-square-foot flagship in December, and Adidas has signed a lease for the 30,138-square-foot former H&M space in the Galerie des Champs-Élysées. The German athleticwear brand will open a flagship there in the first half of 2024. A gym will also open in the shopping arcade, bringing that address to 93 percent occupancy.
“This new lease attests to the undisputed appeal of the Champs-Élysées. The area’s prime commercial properties, particularly the large retail spaces capable of housing international flagships, are also keeping pace with the evolving trends along the avenue, which is now home to some of the world’s leading sporting and luxury goods retailers,” said Pierre-Yves Bonnaud, client management director of owner SFL Asset Management, in revealing the deal.
A new luxury hotel and retail development is also on the way, with Groupama selling 150 Champs-Élysées to a group headed by Brookfield Asset Management, including Saudi investment for a reported 710 million euros in September. The nearly 200,000-square-foot building takes up a city block and is slated for about 54,000 square feet of retail space, much of it reportedly already leased.
Brands are hustling to snap up square footage on the street before the city hosts the Olympics in 2024, with a vacancy rate of just 7 percent. The Olympics “has an incentive effect on brands that are willing to pay top dollar to secure a location during the games,” the report said.
Brands are also looking for temporary spaces, or pop-ups, to cover the duration of the Olympics, which has resulted in “soaring” rents. “The rents of pop-up shops, for the year 2024, exceed those of traditional leases,” it said. The average weighted rental value is 175,989 euros a square foot, or about $196,000 at current exchange.
Jewelry brand Messika opened a pop-up this summer and is slated to open a permanent store on the avenue. Watch brand Panerai is also said to be opening its doors, following the lead of the watch brand Tudor, which opened a store last year.
“Top of the range watch brands, which were traditionally sold under franchise, are opening their own stores to increase their visibility,” according to Matthieu de Mallmann, global head of retail at AXA Investment Management Alternatives division.
The location of the former Disney store, which closed its doors in early June as the company shuttered many of its wholly owned retail outlets worldwide, received two lease offers within 10 days, according to Cushman & Wakefield partner Christian Dubois.
All this floor space feeding frenzy is also good news for retail’s future, particularly for concentrated and glamorous shopping streets, said de Mallmann.
“In a world where omnichannel strategies are fundamental, retailers are much more precise in picking the best locations for their stores. Their expectations have increased, and so have their demands. They can no longer afford for their points of sale to be merely shop windows. A shop is first and foremost a tool for generating revenue and profitability,” he said.
“The strengthening of the transaction and experiential dimensions of the point of sale also explains why we are seeing brands move away from more secondary locations to concentrate on the best destinations, in larger formats,” he added, on the move toward massive flagships.
Mytraffic measured seven key shopping streets in Europe, with Amsterdam’s Kalverstraat showing a foot traffic increase of 30 percent year-over-year, and Madrid’s Gran Via up 26 percent in the same time period. Other streets included Milan’s Corso Vittorio Emanuele, up 6 percent; Antwerp’s The Meir, up 9 percent; Berlin’s Ku’damm, down 12 percent but awaiting the opening of a new Tiffany & Co. store, and London’s Oxford Street, down 18 percent but awaiting the approval of a redevelopment proposal to improve the area.
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