Beyond Foot Traffic: How PropTech and AI Are Reviving Mall Portfolios in 2025
Foot traffic inside a modern shopping mall, highlighting the operational complexity that mall owners face and the growing need for AI-powered facilities and asset management.
In an era of rising shopper expectation and tighter margins, retail property owners must evolve faster than ever. Large-scale malls and retail complexes face rising pressures: from foot traffic shifts and energy costs to operational complexity and asset lifecycle risks. That’s where proptech and AI offer a game-changing advantage.
The Operational Landscape: Bigger, Faster, Smarter
AI Impact and Perception on Facilities and Maintenance
30%
Downtime Reduction
22%
Cost Reduction
70%+
agree AI is Essential for Asset Management
(Source: FMC, Zipdo)
According to recent research, AI-powered facilities management systems outperform conventional operations by 20-30% in key metrics such as downtime and cost control. At the same time, the adoption of proptech across retail facilities is driven by necessity: real-time visibility, centralized operations and smart workflows now sit at the core of modern mall management, with over 70% of facilities industry professionals believe AI is essential for asset management.
For instance, the retail real‐estate sector has recorded a gradual recovery in shopping-centre values and occupancy in many markets. Still, the winners will be those who run operations proactively.
(Source: FMJ, Emerald, sescom.eu, cbreim.com)
Why Mall Operations Need A Unified Platform
Technicians performing HVAC and MEP preventive maintenance, showcasing how smart CMMS platforms like Fleet reduce downtime and standardize facility operations.
Managing multiple floors, tenants, service vendors, assets, HVAC systems, escalators, parking is complex. Each siloes: maintenance logs, tenant service requests, asset lifecycles, cleaning schedules. Without a unified system, costs creep up, downtime lengthens and tenant satisfaction drops.
Fleet gives mall and retail operators real-time visibility across every site. It connects assets, teams and vendors as a flowing, unified operations ecosystem. That means you coordinate teams and vendors in real time, standardize operations at scale, and reduce downtime, increase uptime.
Concrete Features, Tangible Impact
Here’s how Fleet solves real-world problems for mall & retail property managers:
Fleet’s asset inventory dashboard consolidates asset data, lifecycle history, and maintenance records to help mall and retail operators manage equipment proactively.
Work Order and Asset Tracking
Fleet centralizes every asset your retail or mall operation depends on: from escalators and HVAC units to fire panels and back-of-house equipment. Each asset carries its full lifecycle history, giving teams real-time visibility into performance, past repairs, and upcoming preventive maintenance. Fleet automatically generates PPM tasks when data or usage signals indicate wear, ensuring your equipment stays compliant and downtime stays low. This brings consistency across multi-site portfolios and empowers property leaders to manage maintenance proactively instead of reacting to failures.
Fleet’s real-time operations dashboard provides multi-site visibility with mapped locations, open tasks, and performance metrics for data-driven decision-making.
Real-Time Dashboards
Fleet’s real-time dashboards bring every site’s operational health into one unified view. The facility health table flags urgent issues by location so managers know exactly where to focus first. Visual summaries, such as open vs. closed task charts and average completion time metrics turn daily activity into clear, actionable insight. This helps operations teams spot workflow bottlenecks, benchmark performance across malls or stores, and maintain compliance with confidence. With Fleet, leaders get instant visibility, without digging through spreadsheets or fragmented tools.
Create, assign, and track work orders across desktop and mobile. Fleet streamlines multi-site maintenance workflows for technicians and property teams.
Smart Forms & Workflows
From food court hygiene checks to elevator inspections and parking-cleanliness audits, Fleet lets you create smart, customizable forms tailored to each site. These forms power automated workflows: if a technician selects “door sensor fault,” Fleet instantly generates a work order, notifies the assigned vendor, and logs the issue for reporting. Every form becomes a trigger for standardized, predictable operations. This reduces manual follow-up, strengthens compliance, and ensures every site follows the same quality and safety standards.
Fleet’s AI agent enables users to create work orders through chat, automating workflows and accelerating property operations with intelligent task handling.
Proptech & AI-Ready
Fleet is built for the future of property operations. Its AI-supported logic enables predictive maintenance, smarter task classification, and faster data processing, turning property operations into a connected, intelligent ecosystem. By eliminating data silos and standardizing workflows at scale, Fleet positions malls and retail portfolios to operate with higher efficiency, more resilience, and greater long-term ROI.
Why Now Matters
With proptech venture-capital still flowing (US$2.2 bn in global deals) and an industry shift from reactive to proactive facilities management underway, mall operators cannot wait on legacy systems. According to market trends, Smart asset management is increasingly recognised as a cornerstone of operational efficiency and sustainability. For example, a recent analysis found that organisations view emerging tech as boosting asset-management effectiveness at a rate of 46%.
Fleet replaces spreadsheets, standalone service apps and siloed vendors with one cloud-based workflow. It keeps every property running on schedule, every team aligned and every asset optimised.
(Source: EY, Facilities and Estates Management Live, jll.com)
Final Word
For mall and retail property operators, the future is clear: visibility, control, and efficiency in every site.
With Fleet, you coordinate your teams, automate your maintenance-tasks, monitor asset-health and manage your portfolio with confidence.
From cleaning to escalator inspection, from tenant services to energy-use optimisation—Fleet makes operations seamless, scalable and modern.
