The shopping festival has come to an end. For the past month, the city has been decked up as a beautiful bride. And with a host of activities and entertainment offerings — from top western music acts to 20 Arab superstars, Bollywood shows and grander and more participative sports events — the Festival seems to have a habit of exceeding itself from year to year.
The airport, city and malls were teeming, particularly on weekends. The shows and entertainments in the malls have also become progressively more sophisticated and a number of Guinness records were set this DSF, including the longest handmade gold chain.
Retail markets have however not responded as everyone had planned. Whereas during this shopping and tourist season, businesses uniformly expect much higher sales — for some as much as 12-15 per cent of their annual sales — results have been quite mixed, with more pressure being felt at the higher end. Tech and mobiles have done well, and so has gold jewellery. Reports are that electronics had to push hard to get their figures.
At the upper end, across segments, my feeling is that the lack of high spending tourists from Russia (down 18 per cent versus 2013 arrivals, as per official figures) created something of a buying gap.
Though their total numbers are not that high (only 3-4 per cent of the overall arrivals in Dubai) and there was a huge inflow from other countries, especially India (up 10 per cent) and China, the liquidity Russian customers brought is hard to replace in the short term. The constant flow of bad economic news — especially linked to the oil price — has also created a dampener effect.
I am sure in the medium to long term, this will not remain a problem. With its astute management and planning Dubai has always been able to find its way out of situations.
December proved to be a good month for most sectors. So once again the debate has started about which month is best for DSF. Some people support December, while for others there is no point in pushing sales in a month that is already strong. February supporters feel that the Festival would give a fillip to an otherwise weak month.
Still others feel that January fits in best with the need for the end of winter sales for fashion stores and which can then introduce their new Spring collections in February. School holidays in neighbouring countries are also in January. February on the other hand gets a bit close to school exams which would discourage some families from coming. I am sure this debate will go on.
Meanwhile, some retailers have already had a knee-jerk reaction, immediately looking at reducing costs with a few perhaps trying to take advantage of the situation to reduce people. It is staff who are usually the first target. While we hear reports of softening of rents in housing, the largest cost factor for retail is rents and is written in stone.
In fact, most developers are still increasing budgets and targets, so don’t expect any let up on this side. For them it often becomes a handy tool to sift out what they see as undesirable tenants, to be replaced with higher paying ones ready to jump in.
The new Box Park strip in Jumeirah is almost ready to open. This striking outdoor mall with its beautiful colours and graphics — especially in the evening — creates a very different contemporary feel to anything that exists not just in Dubai, but in the entire region. It is good that the shops will be able to open while the weather is still cool, so that they will have some time to trade before summer. This will be a really worthy addition to Dubai’s shopping and eating-out offerings.
The Mall of Emirates is gradually getting back in shape. For the last few quarters, The partial reopening of the parking was greeted by affected retailers with a sigh of relief, but I am sure the management must be working very hard to get the complete mall up to speed and ticking. We are all waiting to see how it looks, especially with the expanded 24 screen cinema and big new brand names expected.
Vox Cinemas are going through a massive upgrade with differentiated offerings and new cinemas coming soon in Bur Juman Centre, Shindaga and Sharjah City Centre. Reel recently opened their new cinema in the Beach, while Grand rebranded itself as Novo and upgraded locations. It also opened a new cinema in Abu Dhabi Central Market and is opening in Dragon Mart in Dubai and Boutik Mall Al Ain.
So the battle of the cinemas is on! Why not?
The writer is CEO of Tridayle Consult FZE (www.tridayle.com)
