Dubai: Florists had a field day on Valentine’s Day, with love buds making a beeline to flower shops across the city, resulting in a bumper sale.

Valentine’s Day once again proved by far the best day for the flower sellers, with Mother’s Day, Eid and Christmas being the other closest competitors.

Still going through the after-effects, many florists and gift shops continued to do brisk business a day after, with late bloomers coming in with big orders.

“We did fantastic business on Valentine’s Day, selling more than 7,000 roses and hundreds of bouquets. We had a long queue of people which stretched outside the shop waiting to get their orders. Normally we have 2 to 3 florists working in the shop but on Valentine’s Day we had ten florists and still we were struggling to cater to the demand,” said Rose Nuevas, manager of Rawdat Al Zuhur Flower Shop, who has been in the business for 18 years.

Unable to hide her glee, she added “every year we increase the stock for the day and before the end of the day we run out of stock.”

This despite the fact that Valentine’s Day is the only day of the year when flowers and bouquets sell for more than double the normal price.

On any given day, a rose sells for Dh7 each, while on Valentine’s Day it sells for Dh15, still it remains the favourite with the people, so much so that most flower shops stock themselves only with roses on the Valentine’s Day.

Keeping the customers entertained while they waited to get their orders, many flower shops came up with innovative ideas. Wud Flowers, one of the biggest players in the industry, offered its customers free drinks and snacks while a band played popular Valentine’s Day numbers.

“It was our way of paying back to our loyal customers, who come to us year after year and it really worked. Now we plan to do something new on Mother’s Day, Eid and Christmas as well. We enjoyed fantastic business this Valentine’s as we always do,” said Kristina Zikich, Creative Director of Wud Flowers.

Asked why the flowers are sold at a higher price on the day, she said: “It’s the domino effect, we get it for a higher price so we sell at a higher price.”

Surprisingly, it is not just the young lovers who mark the occasion with zeal, in fact, Valentine’s is equally popular with veterans.

“We have customers from all background and of all ages, and it is really sweet that many of our regular customers are old men and women,” said Jai Prakash, owner of Garden Gate Flowers, who is running the business since 1999.

This makes one thing clear, that the markets might be going through the flutters of recession, the business of love continues to be in boom.