Dubai Mall

Dubai Mall is considered the world’s largest shopping mall based on total area (with 1,200 shops on a territory of 12,100,000 square feet) and the sixth largest by gross leasable area. This shopping center is part of the Burj Dubai complex. There is a multi-story car park for visitors’ vehicles.

Dubai Mall includes Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo, Discovery Centre, Ice Rink, SEGA Republic, Reel Cinemas.

The Dubai Mall is anchored by Galeries Lafayette, Debenhams, Bloomingdale’s, and Marks & Spencer.

Over 12 million sq ft (equivalent in size to more than 50 soccer fields), the Dubai Mall has a total internal floor area of 5.9 million square feet (55 ha) and leasable space of 3.77 million square feet (35 ha), about the same as West Edmonton Mall.

It surpasses the previous largest mall in the Middle East City Stars, which is located in Cairo, Egypt. With a gross area of over 8 million sq feet (74 ha), City Stars was the largest mall in the Middle East since 2003.

The Dubai Mall has 10–15 distinct ‘ malls-within-a-mall’, totaling 9 million ft² (84 ha) of shopping retail space (comprising a total of 1200 stores when fully operational). Featured attractions include the world’s largest Gold Souk with 220 retailers; the 850,000 sq ft (79,000 m2) Fashion Catwalk atrium; Fashion Island (Avenue), with 70 stores dedicated to haute couture; the Middle East’s first Galeries Lafayette department store; Oasis Fountain Waterfall; and WaterFront Atrium. Other attractions include the region’s first SEGA indoor theme park, SEGA Republic, covering 76,000 sq ft (7,100 m2); KidZania, an 80,000 sq ft (7,400 m2) children’s ‘edutainment’ center; a 22-screen Cineplex, the largest in Dubai; and The Grove, an indoor-outdoor streetscape with a fully retractable roof. It also features over 160 food and beverage options, 220 gold & jewelry outlets, a supermarket, and an organic food mart. Among the shops is British toy store Hamley’s, which opened a 32,000-square-foot (3,000 m2) store that includes a replica of London’s Regent Street, with the franchise owned by Retail Arabia. Many shops, however, remained shuttered for a long while to come. Bloomingdale’s is expected to open by 2010, and Galeries Lafayette by February 2009. It also has a 250-room luxury hotel, 22 cinema screens, plus 120 restaurants and cafes. The Mall has over 14,000 parking spaces across 3 car parks, with valet services and a car locator ticketing system.