Christmas leads to material implications for retail and office market players, says Colliers

December is a time for Romania to score positive results for sales at supermarkets, hypermarkets or discounters as well as for gifts, offering generous returns for retailers in shopping centers and preferring apparel rather than electronic goods relative to other Europeans.

2018-12-13 12:06:35

The season's celebrations are a recurring highlight each year for the office segment as well, as both landlords and tenants invest in promoting the holiday spirit.

When it comes to headline retail sales, Romania is in the second half of the European Union - seven to last to be more precise, though there is still a significant effect, as business in the final month of the year is usually some 17 per cent higher than the monthly average for the year, a Colliers study shows.

"Romanians offer much more attention to food than most Europeans. Romania ranks third in the EU (after France and Luxembourg) when considering the surge in sales of food, beverages and tobacco, which are some 27 per cent larger in December than in the rest of the year," said Silviu Pop, Head of Research at Colliers International Romania. "It might be a cultural thing, as Romanians may have never really gotten over the material shortcomings seen during communist times, particularly the second part of the 1980's."

According to Colliers, one of the greatest assets for companies are its employees, with their productivity and loyalty influenced increasingly more by non-monetary factors. A people-centric approach is prevalent in the most successful organizations, therefore Christmas celebrations are one of the recurring highlights each year, for both landlords and tenants. The degree to which an office building owner would invest in promoting the holiday spirit depends on several variables, such as how demanding the tenants are or how a landlord wants to position the building for existing or potential tenants.

"Some buildings in peripheral areas have no budget covered by the service charge for Christmas decorations in common areas, specifically the reception. Other buildings spend from several hundreds of euros to rent a Christmas tree – adding up to half a eurocent for the monthly service charge per square meter - to 4,000 euros for a building located in one of Bucharest's fast-growing office submarkets (just under one eurocent as per month per square meter), which has quite a big reception area and will have a tree of at least 5-6 meters", concluded Silviu Pop.