Placer.ai: Mall traffic dips in June, half-year traffic mostly positive
Mall traffic declined across the board in June as consumers reined in spending.
That’s according to the Placer.ai June 2025 Mall Index, which showed that shopping center traffic fell slightly following two straight months of year-over-year visit growth in April and May. Indoor malls continued to show the strongest performance, with just a 0.7% year-over-year drop in visits in June. Open-air shopping centers and outlet malls saw visit declines of 1.6% and 4.4% year over year.
Placer.ai says that the dip in visits may suggest that the visit growth in April and May was at least partially driven by a pull-forward of consumer demand in anticipation of tariff-driven price hikes.
With six months in the book, shopping center traffic was mostly positive in the first half of 2025. Indoor malls led the pack, with visits up 1.8%, while open-air shopping centers saw visits grow 0.6% and outlet mall traffic remained relatively flat at -0.8%. All mall formats experienced a rise in average visit duration – with indoor malls once again seeing the largest average dwell time increase of 3.3% – which Placer.ai says suggests an improvement in visit quality and consumer engagement.
Indoor malls were the only shopping center type to surpass pre-pandemic levels in the first half of 2025, with visits up 0.3% compared to 2019.
On a quarterly basis, open-air shopping centers are the only type of mall where visits consistently met or exceeded pre-pandemic levels over the past two years, with second quarter of 2025 visits rising 2.7% compared to the second quarter of 2019. However, indoor malls narrowed the gap significantly this past quarter – with second quarter 2025 visits just 1.1% lower than in those six years ago, marking their strongest performance since 2020. Placer.ai says this suggests that the post-pandemic indoor mall story is a work in progress.
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“While June's softness may reflect natural demand normalization after spring's tariff-driven shopping surge, the broader year-over-year first half of 2025 trends show shopping centers generally exceeding last year's visit levels with average visit duration also on the rise,” said Shira Petrack, head of content at Placer.ai. “And while visit quantity and quality is generally not quite back to pre-COVID levels, the data suggests that the recovery story is very much still being written.”
