Dates: 05 Jan 2012 to 05 Feb 2012

Major events of Dubai Shopping Festival 2012

• Dubai Fashion Week
• Global Village
• Sound and Light Show
• Shows for children
• Food festival
• Aqua show
• Sporting events
• Carnivals in multiple places

The main purpose of the festival is to encourage shopping. There will be major discounts in many places. Last year we witnessed up to 75% discounts for major brands.

There will be 6000 shopping outlets and over 50 shopping malls will be participating in this year’s festival.

Few tips

There are many events and activities held in many places during the shopping festival. You cannot visit every event. The best way to enjoy this mega festival is to plan everything for the whole month.

• Decide what shows you want to see and mark the dates.
• Go shopping at the very beginning and towards the end of the festival. This is the best time to grab mega bargains.
• Collect discount coupons from shops that are valid beyond the shopping festival period. You will be surprised to see the amount of discount coupons available for late shopping.
• Plan your transportation properly. There will be heavy traffic around places where major events are held.
• Make sure you have decided the maximum shopping budget and stick to it. Otherwise you will end up with heavy credit card bills.

To give you a better picture of how large the Dubai Mall is, its total area is comparable to the size of about fifty soccer fields. Its total internal floor area is 548,128 sq. m. (5.9 million sq. ft.), and its leasable space is equivalent to 350,244.5 sq. m. (3.77 million sq. ft.). Inside it are about 15 distinct malls.

The amount of materials used so far in the construction of Dubai Mall speaks of the massiveness of this shopping and recreation complex: more than 13,800 tons of structural steel; more than 179,303 sq. m. (1.93 million sq. ft.) of stone and tile works; and more than 2,600 pieces of external pre-cast completed.

The Dubai Mall houses a total 1,200 shops, likewise making it the mall with the largest number of retailers in the world. About 600 of these shops participated in the mall’s opening (i.e., they opened their doors as well for business), making that day the biggest-ever single-day mall opening in the history of the retail industry.

On the average, some 750,000 shoppers and plain leisure seekers visit the Dubai Mall every week. In April 2009, it registered about 3 million visitors – the highest single-month total so far since its opening.

Be awed by these features and attractions of the Dubai Mall:

• Gold Souq, with 220 retailers (the largest commercial quarter in any Arab city).

• Fashion Island Avenue, an haute couture-dedicated area with 70 stores.

• Fashion Catwalk atrium, with an area of 79,000 sq. m. (850,000 sq. ft.).

• Dubai Aquarium and Discovery Centre (which recorded a total 60,000 ticket sales during the first 5 days following the mall’s opening), which showcases some 33,000 aquatic animals.

• Galeries Lafayette, the first French department store company in the Middle East.

• WaterFront Atrium.

• Oasis Fountain Waterfall.

• SEGA Republic, the first SEGA indoor theme park in the Middle East, with an area of 7,100 sq. m. (76,000 sq. ft.).

• Cineplex, the largest cinema complex in Dubai, with 22 screens.

• KidZania, a family entertainment and education center, with an area of 7,400 sq. m. (80,000 sq. ft.).

• Hamleys, a franchise of the British toy shop giant, with an area of 3,000 sq. m. (32,000 sq. ft.).

• 220 jewelry and gold outlets.

• 3 car parks, with more than 14,000 parking spaces, fully equipped with a car-locator ticketing system.

All these, and more, are manned by Dubai Mall’s over 13,000-strong workforce.

There are several roads visitors can take to get to the Dubai Mall. The access road most visitors prefer to take is the double-decker road Financial Centre Road (formerly called Doha Street).

With all these taking place in Dubai, its retail business has likewise shot up tenfold or more. The emirate has become a preferred choice of place for shopping at least in the Middle East, if not the entire world.

The places to shop in Dubai are too many to mention here. There are the Al Ain Plaza, the Al Bustan Centre, and the Al Khaleej Centre, to name a few.

From the long list, shoppers may find these three as among the best places to shop in Dubai:

The BurJuman Centre Dubai:

This shopping mall is located at Khalid Bin Waleed Street in Bur Dubai. It has an area of 74,322 square meters (800,000 square feet) and is home to some 190 retailers, mostly of well-known American and European brands. These include Polo Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton, Donna Karan New York (DKNY), Christian Lacroix, and many other designer fashion brands.

The mall also houses a number of restaurants, cafes, a food court, and amusement sections. Some of the features recently added to the mall include a mother and child centre, a customer care service, valet parking, and a tourism information booth.

The Century Mall:

This shopping mall is located in the Al Mamzar area, next to the Al Shabab Club. It has an area of 13,935 square meters (150,000 square feet). Topping the list of products being sold in the mall are electronic devices and telecommunication accessories. Also on sale are home furnishings, jewelry, fashion, and health and beauty products.

A children care center, called Jungle Bungle, provides the necessary services to make shopping more enjoyable for parents. The center has a seating capacity of 240, and has several adjoining food outlets. The children learn while they play, and this takes place while their parents are doing their shopping.

The Emirate Towers Boulevard:

This mall sits on a 13,050 square meter (140,469 square foot)-area and houses some 45 retail outlets. Items on sale include the latest in fashion, accessories, and electronics. Designer brands include Giorgio Armani, Veneta, and Gucci.

Body care facilities, a sauna and steam room, cafes, and restaurants complement the shopping environment. To meet the increasing demand for parking spaces, the mall introduced a new parking system.

There are several more great places to shop in Dubai. Tourists have these other options: Dubai Spice Souk, Souk Madinat Jumeirah, Twin Towers, Deira City Centre, Jumeirah Town Centre, Bani Yas Square and Deira Tower, Deira Gold Souk, and Lamcy Plaza Dubai.

Dubai indeed has gone a long way from being a small trading town to the prime shopping center in the Middle East it is now.

Well, the price is almost the same except for some of the online shops.

Emirates Avenue online shopping portal has special discounts for iPhone 4G devices. You can order online, but do not have to pay until they deliver to you free of charge. You have the opportunity to check your iPhone and then make the payments.

New Features in Apple iPhone 4G

The new phone has over 100 new features. Following are few of them.

• Playlist creation – Create custom playlists right on your iPhone.
  5x digital zoom in the camera app.
• Multitasking – You can run third-party apps and switch between them instantly without slowing down the performance of the foreground app or draining the battery unnecessarily.
• Folders – Organize apps into folders with drag-and-drop simplicity. Get faster access to your favorites and browse and manage up to 2160 apps.
• Tap-to-focus for video – While shooting video, tap the display to choose where to focus.
• Auto photo-geotagging.
• The addition of Places functionality.
• The ability to change the Home screen wallpaper.
• Improved spell-checking.
• Support for Bluetooth keyboards.
• Improved email – See messages from all your accounts in a unified inbox, organize messages by threads, open attachments in third-party apps, and more.
• iBooks ebook reader.
• Gift Apps – Send apps as gifts to your friends or family.