Expo 2020 would transform Dubai’s retail sector

Dubai: Dubai’s burgeoning retail sector is all set to be transformed if the emirate is successful in its Expo 2020 bid later this month.

David Macadam, CEO and Vice Chairman at Middle East Council of Shopping Centres, said Dubai profile as a regional retail destination would be bolstered by the huge event.

The “thing about retail here in this region is that tourists are not necessarily are coming from Australia, London, Europe or the West, they’re the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) Mena (Middle East North Africa) traveller,” he said.

Macadam, a Canadian expatriate who has been living in Dubai for the past 10 years, has witnessed a city’s growth off the back of Expo before. In 1986, he saw Vancouver transform from a “sleepy,” “backwater” to a huge metropolis.

In 1986, 22 million people visited the Vancouver’s Expo, Macadam said, with the event morphing into “the whole background effort for the 2010 [Vancouver Winter] Olympics.”

But Dubai is already a bustling metropolis and global aviation hub home to one of the fastest growing airlines.

“The big difference is that Dubai is already well known, it’s already a great hub, it has already a fabulous infrastructure but it’s a city that welcomes growth and change and not every city wants that or needs it,” Macadam said.

Going on current estimates, 25 million visitors are expected to visit Dubai for Expo 2020 if the emirate lands the event. Macadam said the advantage for Dubai’s growing retail sector is that a lot of the infrastructure and amenities are already here.

“The shopping malls are really all about education, entertainment, relaxation, leisure and they are of a size that can accommodate a lot of people — Dubai Mall has 65 million visitors a year,” he said.

The other advantage is that Dubai has been able to attract well-known branded retailers to the emirate.

“When people come here today — we have more brands here than anywhere, except London … [they] come here already for retail because they know they can get what they want,” he said.

Dubai is already home to the world’s largest shopping centre with Dubai Mall, and under the current master plan Mohammad Bin Rashid City is set to have an even larger one. But Macadam insists this is not a case of saturating the retail sector.

“In the US, there is about 17 square feet of retail per person and here right now there is about 13-14 square feet per person and for sure we probably don’t need that much for the local population but on the weekends this place is thriving,” Macadam said, on the influx of regional tourists each weekend.

In the greater sense, Dubai — and the UAE — has a relatively low resident population but its reach is huge. According to 2012 World Bank figures and a 2012 study from Qatari bank QNB Capital, the population of the Middle East & North Africa currently sits at 390 million. The QNB Capital study said population growth in the GCC was three times the world rate.

“So what does that mean for retail — retail is going to grow like crazy — because when people come they’re going to come to the shopping environments,” Macadam said.

It is expected that the economic benefits of hosting Expo 2020 in Dubai would have a ripple effect to the other emirates and across the GCC countries.

“If people are going to come for Expo 2020 its going to benefit the hotels and shopping for everything that’s an hour’s flight away — Muscat, Qatar, Bahrain, otherwise you go to Ras Al Khaimah and drive that way,” Macadam said.