Festivities to last all year in Dubai

Laila Suhail is in an expansive mood. The 17th edition of the annual Dubai Shopping Festival, which begins only today and runs through February 5, looks set to be bigger and better than last year.

Sure, we've heard all that before, but as the emirate's tourism and retail economy has bucked the downward trend seen across much of the region, the CEO of the Dubai Events and Promotions Establishment, which organises the DSF, and her team are excited about both this year's festival itself and the year ahead.

In 2011, the DSF contributed a Dh15.1 billion to the emirate's economy, a study conducted by market research firm YouGov Siraj on behalf of the DEPE showed, with the retail, travel and hospitality segments benefiting the most.

Tourism and the retail and events sectors are central pillars underpinning the success of Dubai's non-oil economy, Shaikh Ahmad Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of the Department of Civil Aviation, Chairman and CEO of the Emirates Group and Chairman of Dubai World, said in a media statement released to GN Focus. "Thanks to Dubai's ongoing investment in infrastructure, and its commitment to building a world-leading retail environment, the emirate has become a magnet for businesses and visitors from around the world. The growing festival and events sector only serves to further strengthen Dubai's offering. Since 1996, the Dubai Shopping Festival has been a success story for the emirate, and has grown to become a brand which carries the Dubai name across borders."

An agency of the Dubai Economic Department, the DEPE's mandate was expanded last year and the Emirate's major events were brought under its purview. In addition to organising the DSF, the Dubai Summer Surprises, Ramadan in Dubai and the two Eid in Dubai events, the DEPE is now associated with everything from New Year's Eve celebrations and the UAE National Day festivities to the Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature and the Dubai International Film Festival. "Our job now is to make sure there are events and retail promotions all through the year, to look at both the micro- and the macroeconomic perspectives and put in place methodologies that will benefit the emirate," she tells GN Focus.

One initiative has been the creation of the Dubai Calendar, a live resource of information on activities in the emirate for business and leisure visitors and residents. Another has been to leverage established events for the benefit of the economy. "For instance, how can we link retail to the Dubai World Cup?" she says. The answer is to bookend the annual horse race, the world's richest, with fashion shows and retail promotions.

Accordingly rather than just work from event to event and find sponsors for each, her agency now also ties up with ten strategic partners for the entire year, each of which is much more closely involved than before. Seventy per cent of the DEPE's budget comes from these partners and various key and support sponsors, with the government putting in the rest. "The challenge isn't about finding sponsors," she says, when asked whether the grim economy has seen sponsors tighten their purse strings. "It's about creating win-win situations for our partners, to create packages that will deliver both for them and for us."

Festive year ahead

2012, then, she says, is going to be a "festive year".

"There are going to be many more events this year, which hopefully will mean more celebrations and more happiness."

Kicking things off is this month's DSF, an event 78 per cent of respondents in the YouGov survey described as "world leading", and on which the agency is spending Dh70 million.

Eighty-four per cent of the 2,879 UAE residents and international respondents polled said the DSF is ‘about much more than justshopping' and that it has grown beyondthe realm of a straightforward shopping festival to offer a range of additional value-added activities.

Besides the now-expected retail promotions and prize draws (some 65 per cent of all city retailers are now involved with the DSF, through a collaboration with the Dubai Shopping Malls Group), this year's event puts the emphasis on outdoor events and weekend activities. Activities are concentrated around six areas: Al Riqqa Road, Al Seef Street, Dubai Festival City, Downtown Burj Khalifa, The Walk at Jumeirah Beach Residence and Global Village in Dubailand. Back by popular demand is the Layali Dubai concert series, which will see two Arabic artists performing in the Burj Khalifa area each weekend.

The DSF has been brought forward to the first week of January following retailer feedback, she says, to coincide with the post-Christmas sales and the spring school holidays in the GCC, a major source market for Dubai's tourism sector.

Other markets the agency has been looking at are Asia, particularly India, where almost irresistible holiday packages have been promoted aggressively to the travel trade, and China, as well as the wider Middle East and the CIS countries. Predictably, tourists from Europe are likely to be lower than normal.

Last year's DSF saw a total of 4.2 million people participate in DSF-related activities. More than 1.1 million regional and international visitors came to Dubai during the DSF period, with the largest proportions coming from India and Saudi Arabia (17 per cent and 15 per cent respectively). The festival's continued strength was echoed by data from retail participants, with sixty per cent of retailers indicating that consumer traffic was ‘the same as' or ‘better' than during DSF 2010.