Thanks to the start-up The Keepers, visitors can leave their motorcycle helmets or mobile phones in safe lockers in 11 of the Group’s shopping centres to enjoy a more convenient and comfortable moment in our centres.

A connected service for more convenience

In 2015, François Jaubert launched the start-up The Keepers with a simple, yet innovative, idea: providing shopping centres with lockers in which customers would leave their motorcycle helmets safely to enjoy a more comfortable visit. The service, initially intended at shopping centres, rapidly convinced other places: cinemas, concert venues, train stations, airports, and so on. Since then, the start-up has launched its service abroad: in Spain (in 2017), in Italy (in 2018), in Belgium and in Luxembourg.

The offer has also been extended to lockers that charge mobile phones – “The Keepers Flash” – and more recently to lockers that securely keep visitors’ coats – “The Dressing locker”. Today, The Keepers has a total of 300 devices deployed across all locations.

The solution provides advantages for customers and the operators of the destinations:

• The user experience is fluid and easy: the lockers provide safe locking and unlocking of the boxes. Also, an app can be downloaded to find available lockers located around the user. This way, clients are likely to spend more time in the location, enjoy a carefree visit and be more satisfied when they leave,
• The Keepers ensures the maintenance of its lockers and provides a detailed reporting and analysis of the lockers’ use (rate of use, duration of use…). Thus, customers are offered a new free service and operators of the places can get an insight on the usage of the lockers and visitors’ behaviours!

For Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield: an opportunity to make customer journey more seamless

Back in 2015, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield became one of the first partners of The Keepers in five shopping centres located in and around Paris: Vélizy 2, Parly 2, Les Quatre Temps, Les Boutiques du Palais and So Ouest. Soon after, other centres followed and got equipped with “The Keepers Jet” for motorcycle helmets. The service is now offered in 11 shopping centres in France : Aéroville, Carré Sénart, CNIT, Confluence, Euralille, La Part Dieu, Les Quatre Temps, Parly 2, So Ouest, Vélizy 2, Les Boutiques du Palais. Some of the onboarded centres also added “The Keepers Flash” service to recharge phones.

The results are very encouraging: during the last twelve months (from July 2018 to July 2019), the lockers were used more than 75,000 times across the Group’s centres. And the service is getting more and more popular: in June 2019 only, there were more than 12,000 users globally.

This partnership illustrates the Group’s will to collaborate with promising start-ups that offer innovative solutions to constantly enhance customer experience in our destinations and make visitors’ journey more seamless and unique. This service contributes to enhancing customer experience and to creating more innovative and connected destinations. It answers one of the Group’s innovation priorities: offering the highest standards of quality to visitors. The Group hopes to be able to keep deploying the solution in other locations, and to implant it in its destinations abroad in the future.

You can find The Keepers here: http://thekeepers.io/