Dubai set to lead Gulf retail sector

Dubai: Dubai is expected to top the Gulf region's retail spending by 2009, despite its population being a fraction of neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
Industry analysts say retail spending in the emirate will hit $7.6 billion (Dh27.95 billion) in 2009, compared to Saudi Arabia with $6 billion and Abu Dhabi at $1.9 billion.
A large part of Dubai's spending will come from tourists, making up for the emirate's huge population deficit to Saudi Arabia. "Dubai will take a lead that may be impossible to overtake. It is expected to have higher retail spend than Saudi Arabia, despite having a population one-twentieth the size. Most of this spend will be generated from the expected 15 million tourists," said Paula Al Chami, at DMG world media Dubai, organisers of next year's InRetail Exhibition, a Dubai event that attracts mall developers and retailers.
Al Chami also highlighted industry figures showing demand for at least 400 new malls across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia in the next 10 years. Her comments were based on the region's two billion potential consumers in countries where gross domestic product is multiplying at more than five per cent.

Age factor

The fact that more than 50 per cent of the region's population is under the age of 20 is also contributing to shopping mall demand, she said. "There has always been a concern in the Gulf on the overdose of malls and pundits have always bemoaned the non-requirement of any further development, but there is a loud voice of disagreement," said Al Chami. The 12 million square foot Dubai Mall, an Emaar project near Burj Dubai, is heading the list of new UAE malls in terms of scale.
But Dubai's neighbours are close on its heels, offering the $266 million Al Shobily Grand Mall in Saudi Arabia, the $400 million City Centre in Bahrain and the $52 million Dar Al Awadi Centre in Kuwait.

Movenpick to expand in Dubai

Dubai: Movenpick Hotels and Resorts has signed contracts to operate seven new hotels in Dubai as the company pursues expansion in the Arab region to match the ongoing economic boom. The new hotels will become operational by April 2009, Movenpick's Middle East vice-president for sales and marketing Toufic Tamim told Gulf News in an interview.
Owned one-third by Saudi billionaire Prince Walid Bin Talal, the Swiss-based hotel management firm has also launched a similar expansion drive in Saudi Arabia.
In addition to the seven hotels and resorts in Dubai, Movenpick has signed up for a resort in Ajman to open by April 2009. Two properties will be located on the Palm Jumeirah Island and one hotel will be part of Ibn Battuta Shopping Mall. Other hotels will be in Deira, Dubai Pearl, Jumeirah Beach and the Laguna area opposite Dubai Marina. Tamim said none of the Movenpick hotels will compete with each other in price or location. "They have different markets. Some of them will rely on leisure tourism coming from Europe, like those on the Palm, and some will rely on the conference business from Jebel Ali like the Ibn Battuta hotel," he said. "This expansion gives us presence in the key areas of Dubai. But we still lack two hotels in the city to complete our expansion," Tamim said.

Movenpick is in negotiations with potential investors in Abu Dhabi to launch its first property in the capital. "We are extremely keen to enter Abu Dhabi. We are actively pursuing opportunities and we are in negotiations with multiple investors in Abu Dhabi to open one or two hotels in Abu Dhabi," Tamim said.

He said the company is not late in entering the Abu Dhabi market because "development plans are just being launched." "In the next two years we foresee three contracts in Abu Dhabi to serve our feeder markets in Switzerland and Germany, to use both Dubai and Abu Dhabi for leisure and business," he said, adding that other emirates were not part of the ongoing expansion focus. "Our main focus is now on Abu Dhabi. Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah are of interest but they are not part of our current focus. But we would like to be there," Tamim said. Saudi Arabia will have six new Movenpick hotels, while potential sites are also being looked in Muscat and Amman. "We are opening six hotels in Saudi Arabia on top of eight hotels in the UAE. The growth is equal in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. We are witnessing a second economic boom in the Arab world and the Saudi market growth is part of it," he said. Movenpick will open 19 new hotels across the region by 2009, creating 6,036 rooms and 93 new restaurants and bars. At present it operates 28 hotels with an inventory of 7,624 rooms and 159 restaurants.
Asked if Movenpick's relationship with Prince Walid's Kingdom Hotel Investments (KHI) was helping the company in its huge growth, Tamim said most of the new developments were owned by individual investors in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. "Out of the 19 hotels under development, 15 are owned by individuals and Kingdom has only minority share in three. Kingdom helped us enter Dubai three years ago with the Bur Dubai hotel but the seven new hotels have nothing to do with Kingdom Hotels," he said.

In May this year KHI bought a hotel in Phuket to be managed by Movenpick. "We cannot deny the fact that Kingdom has helped our expansion. But we also help them by expanding ourselves independently," Tamim said.
Having been helped by KHI in entering the Asia-Pacific, Movenpick is now chasing new management contracts in the region.

Gold Fields plans secondary Dubai listing this month

Johannesburg: South Africa's Gold Fields plans a secondary listing on the Dubai International Financial Exchange by the end of October and may seek further listings in Asia to boost liquidity of its shares, the group said. Gold Fields, the world's fourth-biggest gold producer, said it will be the first African and gold mining company to list on the Dubai exchange.
"There is tremendous liquidity there and the ability to attract some of those investment dollars into Gold Fields stock will be very, very beneficial to the company," Chief Executive Ian Cockerill told Reuters. Although Gold Fields already has some investors in the Middle East, a listing in the region is expected to attact those who feel more comfortable trading on the home bourse, he added. "We've done some pre-marketing and we find a lot of interest in gold. Clearly Dubai is a city of gold," Cockerill said. Dubai is a trading hub, acting as the entry point for physical gold moving to the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian sub-continent.

Strong domestic demand has pushed Dubai's per capita gold consumption to the highest level in the world, a statement by Gold Fields said. "There may be even more (listings) in the future in the Far East... the world's investment dollars are increasingly moving towards the east and companies need to follow the money," Cockerill said. Gold Fields shares, which have gained 14 per cent this year, slipped 0.46 percent to 127.42 rand yesterday compared with a 1.08 per cent fall in the gold mining index.