The Forum brings together commercialisation agencies and shopping centre owners to discuss new ideas and innovations for driving mall revenue in a way that is beneficial to both sides.

Lewis will be attending the meeting along with the relevant spokespeople from Westfield, Capital Shopping Centres, The Mall Corporation, Hammerson and Land Securities. "We're looking at how we can work together to drive quality and standards," he explains. "The key thing is to drive forward the development of metrics to demonstrate the return in investment for the brands when they place money in a shopping centre. In shopping centres it's not just about footfall, it's also about touch, feel and interaction. There is a great opportunity to change customers' perception of a brand. What's lacking is the formation of metrics - the provision of multiple criteria in order to measure the return from a given investment.

"It's extremely hard to accurately measure change in customer perception or sales growth, so we're looking at developing and working with a major research company to examine those metrics and consequently prove how successful shopping centres really are. This is all tied up with the next step in the evolution of shopping centres."

Lewis says he's very keen to develop commercialisation further as an industry. "There are areas where we compete and areas where we co-operate," he says. "It's similar to the BCSC. But it's such a young industry and it's got such explosive growth. Owners receive £200m in income a year, but so far there has been no formal industry body driving things forward. Now is the time for one."

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