The shopping centre owner has put the refurbishment into the long-term plan within the Chester Business Plan time frame.

The Mall's national marketing and operations manager Sara Fuller explains: "We wanted to acquire the car park in Chester so we can ensure the customer visit starts in the car park. There was a great opportunity to improve the structure and branding and customer experience.

"When we first acquire a car park we have to see how it operates and really look at the strategy going forward, for example how many disabled parking spaces we have and how many parent and child bays we have." Works on the refurbishment will start once all observations about how the car park functions have been made.

The acquisition of the Chester car park is part of a comprehensive programme of re-branding by The Mall in all its centres. "We didn't ignore the car parks at all in this process," says The Mall's consultant marketing director John Wringe. "For two thirds of our visitors, their journey starts in our car park so in re-branding and revitalising the car parks we had to produce branding in the car parks that was better than our competitors."

Research carried out by The Mall indicated that customers wanted to feel safe and wanted attention paid to the parent/child facilities. But also highlighted the need for good signage. Other areas key to The Mall's strategy includes looking at the entrance areas, lighting and traffic management.

"All our car parks are exactly the same," says Wringe. "It's a big, vibrant, vivacious approach we have taken on the whole internal branding. We also see huge potential for commercialisation. It shouldn't be overlooked by any means in these hard times." This includes car valets. Then in Bristol, The Mall claims to be the first European shopping centre to introduce a body repair shop in the car park. The Mall hopes to roll this out across the portfolio.

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