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ME shopping festival likely to draw 1.5m people in Dubai
DUBAI. Feb 18: Visitors from overseas began arriving Thursday for the lunch of the Middle East's biggest shopping festival, which organisers nope will draw 1.5 million people, reports AFP.
But managers at some of the 2,500 retail stores offering price reductions for the six-week. "shop-top-you-drop" gala said the number of shoppers had Increased only slightly over previous days.
They added that some people have begun arriving from neighbouring Gulf states like Bahrain, and expected crowds to increase after ifter. the evening meal marking the end of fasting dilring the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Although most visitors are expected from the Gulf region.
hundreds of people have so far made reservations from as far as Thailand. Pakistan. Greece and Ireland, tour operators said.
Immigration officials at Dubai International Airport said they Were busy with people arriving for the festival but gave no figures.
Feng Yuxin of Hubei province in China told AFP-at a shopping mall that he had timed his visit to Dubai, where his wife works as a nurse, to coincide with the shopping festival. .
"If we find nice things we will buy them." his wife Wang Jian Feng said, adding they hoped to buy a dress for their daughter as well as earnings, cameras, watches and toys for family and friends in China.
Shoppers are being lured to thousands of stores offering price reductions of between 20 per cent and 70 per cent as well as to 200 shops in the gold souk which are raffling off a kilogram of 24-carat gold ^Customers will also have the dhance to win daily raffles for luxury cars. On sale are electronics. cars, computers clothes, foodstuffs, machinery, and home appliances.
They are booking into hotels at discount rates and can attend a series of international cultural and sports events being staged as part of Dubai s ambition to put itself on the world map.
In a surge of interest from Thailand, up to 14 groups of between 25 and 72 Thais are due to arrive on Monday at the start of the Chinese New Year, the assistant operations manager at Net Tours. Saheeb Mushtaq, said.
"Last year we had groups (visiting Dubai), but not that ’ many." Mushtaq said, "instead of going to Austria and New Zealand, they are going to
But more groups would have come during the Chinese: holi-• day if the hotels in Dubai were not full because of the Eid ' (feast) which caps the month of Ramadan and which is set to begin °n Monday' Mushtal
Although sales began on Thursday, the festival officially opens on February 22 at the end of the Muslim holiday, organisers said.
Meanwhile, several five-star hotels, in Dubai said reservations from abroad were so far lower than they expected for the period between the end of Eid and the end of the festival on March 26.
Groups are travelling to the festival from Pakistan, which is new because Pakistanis usually come to Dubai to stay with relatives working here rather than in hotels. Mushtaq said.
He added groups have booked from Ireland and Greece, and he h^s received many inquiries from South Africa. Festival organizers, said they also expected shoppers from Iran. Eastern Europe. Russia. Central.Asia, and India.
Fathollah Ghlassi. an Iranian . who has two out of 12 shops offering reductions, said all stores in Dubai will see sales increase.