What makes a successful retail destination continue to outperform? Increasingly, it is the ability to understand how customer behaviour is changing and continuously evolve the offer, experience and use of space in response.

For owners and managers of retail real estate, active management is rarely about a single intervention. It is an ongoing process of understanding how customers are using an asset, where new demand is emerging and how the physical environment, retailer mix, partnerships and experiences can work harder together.

Across Dexus-managed retail centres, that approach is playing out in different ways. Recent initiatives at QV Melbourne, Bayfair, Ocean Keys Shopping Centre and Indooroopilly Shopping Centre have responded to opportunities ranging from the evolution of the evening economy to experience-led retail and major local events.

All four were recently recognised at the Shopping Centre Council of Australia (SCCA) Marketing Awards, with three category wins and Indooroopilly named runner-up, providing a timely window into how customer-led initiatives can contribute to broader asset performance.

Responding to changing patterns of demand

At QV Melbourne, the evolution of QV Food Hall reflects a broader shift in how people use the CBD throughout the day.

QV already attracts workers, residents, students and visitors across an extended trading day. Following the redevelopment of its former food court into a contemporary casual dining destination, customer insights pointed to an opportunity to further develop the evening dining occasion and increase retailer productivity between 4pm and 8pm.

The Casual Dining Day to Night campaign brought together retailer offers, live music, food influencers, digital media and placemaking to reinforce the precinct's day-to-night positioning.

Food Hall sales increased 45.4% and evening visitation rose 18.2% during the campaign. Significantly, visitation remained 17.2% above pre-campaign levels afterwards, while research conducted six months later found strong spontaneous recall of the campaign and identified the Food Hall as the most positively received change within QV.

Rather than simply generating short-term traffic, the initiative demonstrates how investment in place and experience can be reinforced through active management to encourage new patterns of use.

Connecting an asset to its wider market

At Bayfair in Tauranga, active management has taken a different form: recognising the centre's place within a much broader economic and community ecosystem.

The Zespri AIMS Games attract more than 14,000 athletes to Tauranga each year. Bayfair had built an established team photography experience around the event since 2018. In 2025, a strategic partnership with Mercury provided the investment, national reach and sponsorship platform to take an already successful activation to another level.

The resulting experience attracted 11,713 athletes and supporters, equivalent to 84% of tournament participants. Bayfair recorded 36,970 additional visits compared with the previous week and an estimated $2.07 million in additional sales. The partnership has been renewed for 2026.

The opportunity was not simply to attract traffic. It was to understand a significant source of demand within the centre's wider catchment and position Bayfair naturally within that customer journey.

Experience as a reason to choose

Experience is another increasingly important part of the active-management toolkit.

At Ocean Keys Shopping Centre, Santa's Magical Elevator built on one of retail's most established seasonal traditions by reimagining the customer journey around it. An immersive 90-second elevator journey, snowfall, premium theming and inclusive photography sessions turned the traditional Santa visit into a broader destination experience.

December traffic increased 8.6% year-on-year, total bookings increased 35.9% and total Santa photography sales grew 13.2%. Weekend sessions booked out, with every day fully booked once school holidays commenced.

The result underscores the continuing role of physical retail as a place for experiences that extend beyond the transaction, while supporting visitation and broader centre engagement.

A similar focus on changing customer preferences informed INDRO! Beauty Mart at Indooroopilly Shopping Centre. Drawing on the growing beauty discovery trend, the activation created a premium, personalised marketplace-style experience linked to spend across fashion, beauty and accessories generating 34,054 additional centre visits and supporting sales across the categories.

Active management is an ongoing discipline

For a retail platform, the ability to translate customer and market intelligence into action is an important part of active management. That means understanding what is changing at an asset and within its catchment, testing how the centre can respond and measuring whether those initiatives are influencing visitation, engagement and retailer performance.

The SCCA recognition across all four centres reflects the individual campaigns, but collectively point to something broader: the value of staying close to customers and retailers, responding to changes in how people use retail destinations, and continually evolving successful assets to strengthen their relevance and performance over time.