Geanina Ungureanu, CPI Romania: The real estate sector is heavily influenced by digitalization and sustainability

In our latest interview series, “Industries to Watch in 2024,” we had the opportunity to engage in a conversation with Geanina Ungureanu, the Head of Retail Romania at CPI Property Group. As we delve into the realms of the commercial real estate industry, Geanina shares her insights and perspectives on the current landscape, strategic initiatives, and the future outlook for this sector in Romania. This exclusive interview, featured in the February 2024 edition of Business Review Magazine, offers a unique glimpse into the dynamic world of commercial real estate, exploring trends, challenges, and the innovative strategies that shaped the industry’s trajectory in recent years.

This year presents both challenges and opportunities for the real estate industry – including the shopping centers – which is in a continuous transformative process, influenced by the fast-paced technological developments, the changing consumer behavior, and the economic context. Shaped by various internal and external factors, the real estate landscape is evolving, and our shopping centers quickly adapt the strategies to integrate the latest technology discoveries, prioritize the customer omnichannel experience, and commit to ESG practices, to be successful on the market. 

Just like the other players on the market, our retail properties (the 4 VIVO! centers located throughout the country, Felicia Commercial Center, and Sun Plaza shopping center) had many challenges during the last few years (especially during the pandemic period), but last year was quite good, and this shows once again the consolidation of the retail sector and the resilience of brick-and-mortar retail in general. Definitely, this is one of the sectors that proves its capability of re-inventing itself, thus being the one that managed to be stronger in the various economic contexts.

2024 is filled with new opportunities and challenges as the players on the market are expected to continue to adapt to the current trends focused on creating and personalizing the ‘customer experience’ while integrating the technological advancements. The vision concentrated on the customers and their needs is essential in order to promote in our shopping centers the positive experiences during each phase in the customer journey, while the special accent is indeed on the word ‘experience’.

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The real estate sector is heavily influenced by digitalization and sustainability, and both are considered market trends in 2024. Moreover, the omnichannel experience is driven by the digitalization process, considering that consumers demand more and more experiences across digital, social, and physical channels.

Therefore, we are very focused on our marketing and digitalization together with the decoration and the customization of experiences and events in our regional shopping centers that cover big regions all over Romania (Bucharest, Cluj, Constanta, Iasi, Baia Mare and Pitesti). This always translates into the increase of loyalty and satisfaction of the customers that can also become brand ambassadors for our locations.  We combine the traditional strategies of tenant mix, pop-ups, and clustering, together with the omnichannel tendencies of converging the online with the physical tools, these translating into almost 100% occupancy in all our retail properties.

Continuing in this direction, we always strive to follow the current trends in our refurbishments and we implement together with our retail partners new concept stores and pop up’s that translate more into this show-room novelty style that enhances the experience of the customer, together with the big department stores concepts and market place style for the food operators, that will be shown also in the next years as big retail trends.

Also, of outmost importance for us is renewing and refurbishing our buildings with the latest technologies to ensure our long-term commitment to sustainability, and to have viable solutions with positive impact on the environment.

We believe that by adapting to the current market trends, not only we meet the new demands of our consumers, but we also aim to position ourselves as customer-focused, innovative and environmentally responsible.