Long before the Burj Khalifa, The Dubai Mall and Atlantis the Palm, and the pyramid-like Raffles Hotel and its adjacent Wafi Mall were built, before the Dubai Metro was born and three years before the Burj Al Arab opened, there was the Dubai Shopping Festival.
Launched in February 1996, it is perhaps the city’s longest-running event, an annual, billion-dollar shopping and entertainment extravaganza that is as integral to Dubai as its maritime industry.
Thursday brings up the 20th anniversary of the festival, which boasts the participation of more than 70 shopping malls and 3,000 retailers citywide, in public parks, beachfronts, shopping malls and more.
Originally conceived to position the emirate as a family destination, the month-long event is always held at the beginning of the year (save for a sombre period in 2006 when the festival was postponed following the death of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum) and has grown to become a behemoth on the Dubai social calendar, and a retail and entertainment hub for the entire region.
“When Dubai launched the first edition of the festival in 1996, it was a pioneering thing because no one at that time understood the importance of festivals towards the economy and tourism sectors,” says Laila Mohammed Suhail, the chief executive of Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment. “When we started, our aim was to boost Dubai’s position as a shopping and family tourism hub, and when we started, we only had around three or four malls and a couple of hundred retail shops participating.”
If you thought it was all about the discounts and bargains, you’re mistaken.
Original article by Hana Khalaf
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20th anniversary of Dubai Shopping Festival will be ‘biggest party in town’
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