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TOURISTS FUEL DUBAI’S BUILDING BOOM

The Dubai Mall is only one of many large projects under way in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The country is undergoing a building boom due to its newfound status as a world tourist destination. “It already receives more visitors than Egypt,” said Simon Thomson, the principal partner of Retail International, London, a retail and shopping center consultant firm specializing in the region.

Five million tourists visit annually, says Thomson. Government projections say there will be three times as many international visitors per year by 2010.

In fact, the city has four other megamalls under development, according to Retail International. They are Dubai Festival City (story, $2.5B Dubai Festival City a ‘city within city’), the 3.2 million-square-foot Gardens Mall, the roughly 6.5 million-square-foot Mall of Arabia, and The Mall of the Emirates, estimated at about 4 million square feet. In addition, there are still other centers that have been or are being expanded, including Dubai Marina Centre and BurJuman Centre.

Thomson calculates that by 2010, Dubai will boast some 32 million square feet of retail space, about five times today’s 6.5 million square feet. Any talk of overbuilding is premature, he insists. “Given its international economic and political stability, my hunch is that Dubai will turn into an astounding success story for the first half of the 21st century,” he said, citing the emirate’s climate, social tolerance levels (alcoholic beverages are permitted, unlike elsewhere in the Muslim world) and growing connections to the tourist industry.