Dubai Mall business picking up after 'slow start'

Dubai Mall: F&B outlet operators say it was a 'slow start' for business at the largest mall in the world.

After a slow start with tenants reporting “less footfall than expected”, business for Dubai Mall’s F&B operators is finally picking up.

Mohi-Din BinHendi, president of BinHendi — a major tenant in Dubai Mall — commented: “Admittedly in the beginning there, business was pretty bad.

“I think the decision for the mall owners to open when a lot of outlets hadn’t opened was not a good thing, but now Dubai Mall is really picking up, business is really happening.”

New Karim Rashid-designed outlet Switch’s director, Deem Al Bassam, added that there was “a lot of competition” in the world’s biggest mall.

“I think 120 restaurants are too much,” she said.

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“They were expecting 30 million people per year to come in, but I don’t think that will happen this year.”

However Al Bassam said she was “very excite” about how the mall would perform in future.

“If [Switch] is successful now when the mall is empty, I imagine it will do very well once the mall is full,” she noted.

BinHendi added that he felt the impact of the economic slowdown on consumers had been a major contributing factor to the slow footfall.

“The psychological effect [of the downturn] on people’s minds was stopping them from spending — there was this big financial bang and a lot of people lost money, so psychologically consumers were badly affected,” he pointed out.