Thousands of shops, significant discounts as well as numerous entertainment options attract millions of shoppers to UAE for the annual Dubai Shopping Festival. This year’s festival ends on 20 February.
The annual Dubai Shopping Festival started on 20th January in the world’s biggest shopping center – the Dubai Mall – and launched a month-long shopping spree. The festival popular among shoppers from near and far is ending on 20th February. Until then the visitors can look forward to over six thousand retail outlets and fifty shopping malls, several thousand square meters of shopping centers and significant discounts and giveaways.
Dubai in United Arab Emirates is a renowned shopping destination throughout the year since the shopping is tax free. Therefore fashionable clothes, perfumes, electric appliances as well as gold and jewelry are available for lower prices than in Europe.
During the festival the retailers offer even greater discounts. Several hotels and tour operators also started offering special travel packages for shoppers coming to the festival – the visitors can for example get free transport from the airport or an extra night in the hotel room for no extra charge. Every year around 3 million of shoppers come to Dubai during the festival.
Besides shopping the visitors can enjoy their time in Dubai in various other interesting ways. Dubai Mall for instance offers enormous ice rink or even five indoor ski runs with ski lifts that form the biggest indoor ski resort in the world. Another popular attraction is a huge aquarium with more than 140 species of fish including sharks. The aquarium is inscribed in the Guinness Book of Records as the biggest indoor aquarium in the world.
Outside the shopping malls the tourists can choose among a plethora of attractions and activities including the performances of the Dubai Fountain reaching 275 meters in height or walk on the outdoor observation deck of the highest man-made structure in the world – the skyscraper Burj Khalifa (828 m). Tourists are also often lured to explore the artificial archipelago – Palm Islands.