How Shaftesbury Capital turns London's most iconic venues Into a digital-first destination

About Shaftesbury Capital

Shaftesbury Capital is the curator of some of London's most iconic destinations, managing a portfolio of properties across the West End that includes Covent Garden, Carnaby Street, and Soho.

With millions of local and international visitors moving through their pedestrianized streets every year, Shaftesbury Capital sits at the intersection of heritage, culture, and modern retail, managing not just the physical spaces, but the experiences, brand mix, and community identity that make each destination unique.

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The challenge

Shaftesbury Capital's properties are not traditional shopping malls. They are historic buildings, streets, and community destinations that are as much cultural landmarks as they are places to shop. That heritage is their greatest asset, but it also comes with a distinct set of challenges.

Navigation at scale

With a network of winding Victorian streets and distinct micro-destinations spread across the West End, visitors frequently struggled to find their way around, missing retailers, restaurants, and experiences that were steps away but almost impossible to discover without guidance.

Discovery gaps

Shaftesbury Capital continuously programs its spaces with new brands, pop-ups, events, and holiday activations. Without effective digital tools to surface that content, even the most compelling experiences went unnoticed by visitors who didn't know to look for them.

Connecting data to physical reality

Understanding visitor behavior through digital channels provided valuable signals, but those signals only became actionable when tied to the actual layout and geography of each destination.

Competing for time

With so many options competing for visitors' attention, Shaftesbury Capital needed to give people compelling, easy-to-act-on reasons to visit, stay longer, and come back.

The solution

Shaftesbury Capital approached these challenges not by overhauling their destinations, but by layering smart digital tools on top of the world-class physical experiences they had already built.

Mapping as a discovery engine

A central part of the solution was embedding Mappedin's mapping technology directly into the shopping centre websites. For a destination like Covent Garden, defined by charm but complicated by narrow historic streets, the ability to help visitors navigate and plan their visit proved immediately valuable.

The most-searched and most-viewed content on the Covent Garden site consistently reflects this: visitors aren't just browsing. They're planning, orienting themselves, and seeking out specific experiences before they arrive. During the Christmas season, a simple map pin marking London's largest hand-picked real Christmas tree became one of the site's most engaged pieces of content, proving that when discovery is made easy, visitors respond.

Itinerary-led content and guided experiences

Recognizing that modern visitors want their time curated, not just their purchases made, Shaftesbury Capital developed itinerary-based content to guide visitors across their destinations. Whether that's a beauty trail through Covent Garden, an afternoon tea experience, or a guide to the latest fashion, this content, delivered through the website, interactive map, and social channels, gives visitors a structured and purposeful way to move through the destination.

These guided journeys serve a dual purpose: they help visitors get more out of their time on-site, and they help Shaftesbury Capital surface new brands, hidden gems, and programming that visitors might otherwise walk past without knowing existed. A quick-fire social edit that someone saves on their phone becomes a personal itinerary for their next visit, turning passive interest into active planning and longer dwell time.

Test, learn and program continuously

Rather than making large, permanent investments in third-space infrastructure, Shaftesbury Capital has built a model of short-term, flexible programming across its pedestrianized spaces.

The Piazza at Covent Garden serves as a live testing ground, one month hosting Olympians on a Chanel-branded skate ramp, the next offering food trucks during school half term. This nimbleness keeps the destination feeling fresh and relevant, and ensures that when something doesn't work, it can be switched off just as easily as it was switched on.

The results

Shaftesbury Capital's approach to blending heritage, curation, and technology has produced a destination that consistently ranks among Europe's most talked-about retail environments. Covent Garden was named Europe's most popular shopping destination in a survey that aggregated TripAdvisor reviews, social hashtag volume, and user-generated content sentiment, a metric Catherine Riccomini considers just as meaningful as any commercial figure.

The digital channels that Mappedin's mapping platform supports have become the primary touchpoint for visitor engagement, giving the team a real-time read on what visitors want and how to keep delivering it.