Global Village set for grand revamp before next DSF

Dubai: The month-long shopping frenzy is nearly over for another year as the Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF) comes to an end.

This time next week, wallets haemorrhaging cash and frantic dashing from mall to mall in your lunch hour will be gratefully forgotten by most.

For the brains behind Global Village, however, it is the complete opposite.

They are already in the middle of planning a serious revamp for next DSF. Global Village is to become a permanent fixture on Dubai's landscape with ambitions plans to be one of the most visited cultural entertainment parks in Asia.

"As it is now, a seasonal event, it can only run in the winter. But Dubai's strategy has changed to increase and attract more domestic tourists so it was an ideal decision to move towards a permanent project," chief executive officer Abdullah Redha Ali Bin Redha said.

"It will run 365 days a year and to do that it requires a permanent structure. It requires permanent roads, buildings, employees," he added.

The buildings will be solid structures, covering 4.5 million square feet, excluding parking facilities but according to Bin Redha, the pavilions will no longer be country-orientated, but regional.

Many pavilions

Official names of the pavilions will be Europe, Africa, Asia, Arabia, Far East and Pan America-Australia. Each pavilion will have over 50 retail units and between eight or 10 restaurants and there will be over 15, 000 shows and events annually.

These new buildings will be covered and fully air-conditioned, so that it will not be insufferable during the summer months and will not be vulnerable to flooding or damage caused by bad weather.

Any rainwater will be drained into a 700-metre canal. There are also plans to build hotels in keeping with the cultural theme.

Global Village made its debut in 1996 with 18 stalls on a small patch of land on Dubai Creek with around 500,000 visitors.

Nine years later, in 2007, it attracted 4.2 million visitors who spent approximately Dh500 million in pavilions from over 40 countries over a period of 59 days, according to Bin Redha. Employee numbers have risen to 8,500 to cope with the anticipated 4.5 million visitors this year.

Launchpad

Bin Redha said that Global Village has been a "launchpad" for some Dubai-based businesses that started out at the event and then became famous within their industry with their own brand.

At the start of February, Global Village found itself under a cloud after inspectors from Dubai Municipality discovered illegal goods like leopard skins and shahtoosh shawls were being sold in some pavilions. However, Bin Redha said they are addressing these issues.