Technology boost for Nepi Rockcastle's Romania malls
Shopping Centers Promenada and Mega Mall, which are part of the NEPI Rockcastle portfolio, are the first malls in Romania to implement the Google indoor mapping service.
With the help of the service, visitors of Promenade and Mega Mall can navigate more easily inside the two shopping centers with their mobile phone.
Nepi, now worth more than R100bn, has brought Google Maps into its flagship centres to allow customers to find shops with handheld devices.
Nepi has become one of the largest real-estate companies in continental Europe and is the largest company with a focus on the central and eastern European region.
It is also listed on Euronext Amsterdam and is being included in the FTSE-JSE Top 40 index.
Its management said that cutting-edge technology made mall management easier.
"As part of our real strategy to enhance visitors’ experience using innovative technologies, Nepi Rockcastle introduces exclusive services in our shopping centres.
The two shopping centres and the airport in Timisoara are the only Romanian partners of Indoor Google Maps, the three being in a select company, because only a limited number of locations worldwide have implemented the service," said co-CEO Alex Morar.
As of 2015, Nepi Rockcastle has been investing in the development of an integrated digital ecosystem to provide visitors with an enhanced experience.
Recently, Nepi Rockcastle unified the digital ecosystems of all the group’s shopping centres by implementing a single sign-on system, allowing users to access the websites or applications of any shopping centre with the same login data.
The company is expecting high double-digit dividend growth in the year to December.
It has said that distributable earnings per share for the year 2017 are expected to be about 17% higher than the 2016 pro-forma distribution of €0.41 a share published in the Nepi Rockcastle prospectus.
The company owns and manages 50 income-producing assets with a total value of about €3.8bn. It has six additional assets under development.
Nepi has just entered its seventh central and eastern European market, Bulgaria, by acquiring Serdika Centre and Office in Sofia.