Al Ghurair City, a new key sponsor of Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF), is investing close to Dh2 million on DSF activities and events. The mall has lined up a promotion for the festival, offering shoppers deals as well as a chance to win big prizes.

Meanwhile, Dubai's shopping malls are all set in preparation to attract shoppers with promotions and deals during DSF from March 1 to 31. DSF is offering 25 per cent off on registration fees to retailers situated in participating shopping malls. As a result, the malls expect more retailers to join DSF 2002.

Avijit Yadav, marketing manager of Al Ghurair City, said DSF provides malls an opportunity to do attractive promotions and draw huge benefit in terms of substantial increases in retail sales.

"DSF has acted as a catalyst to creating greater awareness about the activities and attractions at the mall, which in turn has helped increase visitor numbers and sales."

Yadav said it was difficult to predict how DSF would fare this time, as this is the first time that the festival is being held outside the Eid holidays. "My view is that DSF is now a well established event, and we are confident that visitors will continue to come without the added incentive of holidays."

Al Ghurair City's participation in DSF as a shopping mall in the past was crowned by four Innovation Awards from the DSF Organising Committee for four consecutive years from 1996 to 1999.

Meanwhile, Dubai's malls are confident that DSF 2002 would bring in increased traffic of shoppers into Dubai, and they are competing with each other to offer deals and prizes as part of promotions.

Optimism among malls is due to the fact that DSF has consistently boosted retail sales across Dubai. The number of visitors in the first year - 1.6 million -rose to 2.55 million last year.

Sales figures which were Dh2.15 billion in DSF 1996 increased to Dh4.5 billion last year.

Eisa Adam Ibrahim, general manager of BurJuman said the mall was giving finishing touches to its promotions and events, while at the same time encouraging tenants to participate in DSF 2002 through any of the registration categories. The retailers have shown a higher interest in DSF this year and we expect maximum participation from them.

"We have prepared special promotions that will be very different from other malls. All our stores are taking part in DSF under different categories.

"Lamcy Plaza is committed to providing high standards of facilities to shoppers, specially as DSF attracts visitors from all parts of the world and people expectations are quite high," said Sunil Bharadwaj, sales manager of Lamcy Plaza.

Al Bustan Centre had lined up fun activities for the whole family, especially at the Fantasy Kingdom where there will live cartoon characters, magic shows and competitions for kids, said Moussa El Hayek, general manager of Al Bustan Centre.

Abdul Salam Madi, manager of Al Manal Centre, said as a Support Sponsor of DSF, Al Manal was putting finishing touches to its events and promotions.

"DSF is the No. 1 shopping festival in the region and the innovative events it organises have a great impact on the retail trade," said Madi.

"In anticipation of hordes of visitors, our stores have brought in extra stuff with special offers thrown in. Al Manal Centre is creating new promotions to attract more shoppers during DSF.

"Every year during DST we get a lot of visitors during DSF, especially from the GCC countries and this year we are confident the numbers will be much higher."