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Dubai - land of the mega mall
Even the shortest weekend break in Dubai, presents the traveller with endless opportunities to shop. Karl McKeever, brand director of visual merchandising consultancy Visual Thinking, guides The Appointment through three of the most recent and popular shopping malls that Dubai has to offer.
Anyone familiar with Dubai, the ambitious, headline-seeking upstart of the United Arab Emirates, will have noticed an important difference in the skyline this year due to the reduced number of high level 'super cranes' which were once a notable feature in this stunning city.
Inevitably, the credit crunch has hit Dubai, and with visitor numbers down, work on new commercial and residential developments has slowed significantly. Although it may not be the 'boom town' it once was, the current global downturn should perhaps be regarded as little more than an inconvenient 'blip' in one of the most impressive regional development stories of the last decade. However, when growth does return to the international business and leisure scene, Dubai will surely be amongst the first to push through with renewed ambition and vigour.
With the huge growth in tourism that took place (the UK being only a 6-hour flight away), came a league of new and high-quality international brand hotels and shopping malls. In fact, Dubai has over 40 malls and around 4,000 stores, with everything from traditional souks (Deira City), to the innovative IBN Buttuta Mall, which recreates voyages of the famed Arabic Explorer within a complex of six themed environments.
At only 10 minutes from Dubai International Airport, the mall at Festival Centre in Festival City is modern and convenient with a good range of regional and international stores. The biggest and most obvious tenant is IKEA, which stands out amongst the dusty, half completed urban approaches, mirroring the architectural DNA of its global outposts, (think blue and yellow box outside and cheerful, if not a little non-descript, interior).
An amusing point of IKEA in this location is that of self service - a concept not overly familiar to the locals, who are more expectant of the full serve notion. This makes for a store full of expats, wondering whether to get another Lack side table for only a few dirhams, whilst the locals wander around trying to get the idea of flat-packs and those pesky allen keys.
Festival Centre is easy to navigate and has a number of impressive features, including a popular Gold Souk, a decent food court and large multiplex cinema, topped off with cafés and restaurants with a fun fair outside. The linear mall hosts a variety of stores, and amongst my recommendations is a handy M&S with a small food offering. My other current favourites include Ed Hardy (denim and lifestyle), Patchi (gifts), Oysho (lingerie), Paul Smith, Koton, Paris Hilton (accessories), Bin Hendi (jewellery) and Graniph (t-shirts).
With two adjacent hotels that overlook the Dubai Creek and its impressive new city skyline, it is possible to 'do Dubai' without venturing any further than Festival Centre. But for most, shopping in Dubai also includes two other notable malls - The Mall of the Emirates, and The Dubai Mall, the newest addition to the retail scene, opened in November 2008.
For a little while, The Mall of the Emirates ruled supreme. This high-quality destination opened in 2005 and is now a well established favourite with both locals and tourists alike.
With a new twist to the familiar mall formula, visitors can shop, sleep and ski all under one roof. Featuring over 460 stores, it also has a 5-star Kempinski hotel and the spectacle that is Ski Dubai, a 400 metre dry ski run built in one of the world's hottest destinations!
Home to major stores including Carrefour, Harvey Nichols and Debenhams, it also has an impressive array of other European and American branded retailers (Next, Zara, H&M, Disney, BoConcept, etc), along with a good selection of local retailers, selling traditional Arabic clothing, jewellery and home wares.
Soon to be connected to the much-awaited Dubai Metro (due to open in September), this mall is keen to keep up-to-date. As a result, it is mid way through a major extension that will see another 10,500 square metres of retail space and additional parking facilities when completed in Spring 2010.
I personally like this mall because its scale allows it to be easily navigated before tiredness takes over. Shopping is made easier by the careful planning of outlets into neatly arranged clusters of like-minded shopping missions - think several 'home' stores adjacent to one another, helping to cut down on walking and keeping your motivation levels high!
The Dubai Mall is an altogether different type of shopping destination. While the developers have awarded it many adjectives of their own, I sum it up in just three words: vast, mesmerising and exhausting.
Opened in November 2008, with over 1,200 planned stores, 100 eating venues and a host of services fit for a king, The Dubai Mall is truly enormous and worthy of its title as 'the world's biggest shopping mall'.
Built on an area of over 12 million sq ft (equivalent in size to more than 50 football fields), The Dubai Mall offers a range of distinct 'malls-within-a-mall', totalling 9 million sq ft of shopping space.
Of course, being in Dubai, it must also boast its own number of impressive firsts. There's an ice rink, the Dubai Waterfall, the world's largest indoor aquarium, a 'live' fashion runway, an ultra luxurious designer quarter (making a similar one tried in London's Westfield look tiny by comparison), as well as numerous guest services such as valet parking and crèches.
To have described this place as The Dubai Mall, is a little misleading. In reality, it is a mini city of mixed use retail, entertainment, sport, dining and leisure facilities, set within a completely new urban block. And sitting underneath the world's tallest building, surrounded by vast numbers of new apartment towers, it is no wonder the developers were encouraged to 'think and build big'.
Notable retail features include the first international opening of UK supermarket Waitrose, recently joined by a sister outlet at the Marina Mall. By comparison to the more 'compact' sized branches found in the UK, this Waitrose is very big. So much so, that many grocery products are over extended to fill the huge space, which also features a line of John Lewis general merchandise, including everything from cutlery to barbeques.
For me, it's an appealing store with many attractive design features (check out area walls, fresh counters, way-finding signage etc.). I hope the chain brings these new design aesthetics to the UK soon to update their less imaginative store environments at home.
Also check out the first overseas branch of Paris famous store, Galeries Lafayette. This takes up proud residence as an anchor store, as will the iconic American brand, Bloomingdales, when it opens its doors in October this year. For now, what Galeries lacks in 'wow factor' is more than compensated for by the breadth and assortment of its brands stocked.
With so many stores presenting their latest retail concepts and best VM finery, every floor and almost every store of The Dubai Mall has something new and interesting to offer consumers.
In fact, this mall may come to be seen as representing a high water mark in retail concept design for some years to come, depending on how fast the economy, and with it the fortunes of its retail tenants, improves. Certainly money does not seem to have been an issue in the fit out standards seen here.
For me, The Dubai Mall offers a timely reminder of what the retail world was like in the not so distant 'pre credit crunch days', when all talk was of continued growth, newness and opportunity and not the depressing, recessionary gloom that much of Europe has been immersed in of late.