The potential of shopping malls in Oman

Oman, unlike many other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, is lagging behind, when it comes to the shopping mall culture.
Barring a couple of malls in Muscat, most other shopping malls are small shopping complexes with limited offerings. With competition heating up, the way the malls are designed, built, marketed and managed is set to change drastically.
With more than 30 malls on the drawing board in Oman, only a few will survive. Since most malls in Oman are planned as neighbourhood malls, once we see the advent of destination Malls, these neighbourhood malls will vanish.
Also, with stiff competition coming from online portals, mall developers are left with little choice than to change their strategies and work harder at adding better offerings at the malls.
Footfalls across most malls have dropped by 20 to 30 per cent and this is impacting the expected overall revenues of malls. Most mall developers, who have a long-term vision for their assets have consciously added new tenants, food and beverage outlets, renovated their malls to give customers a new experience, adding new categories of fun, and newer concepts to ensure that the engagement with customers does not decline.
With all these add-ons, the malls are all slowly moving towards becoming destination centres, rather than just a small neighbourhood mall, with just shopping, which they were popular for once. This transformation from a neighbourhood mall to a destinations mall will help mall developers to invite customers more often to the malls.
While a few mall developers are making changes on their own, most of them have realised the impact of making a change and have hired professional asset/mall management companies, to reduce the risk of failure. With the market conditions not conducive for growth, due to the current slowdown, developing malls is becoming more challenging.
Today, a consumer is not looking at only shopping as a reason to go to a mall, they are expecting that the malls would be able to offer options beyond shopping.
To ensure that malls are not left behind, mall developers, have no choice but to create more reasons for consumers to come to the malls than just for shopping, as shopping can be done anywhere, it the overall experience and engagement that will keep the consumer coming back to malls again and again.
Malls that can understand the current trends and also envisage the future will have to gear up for the future, which is in the interest of their asset/mall. The malls of future will have to be planned much beyond shopping, they have to be an epicentre for entertainment, enjoyment, experience, engagement, experiment, enthralling, eatertainment, edutainment, and many more.
Shopping mall specialists will have to play a bigger role in this transformation, as they bring with them the required experience and expertise of running successful malls. Malls, which are prepared for this transformation, will have to develop or decay.
Oman has yet to see a great mall like the Dubai Mall or The Mall of Emirates in Dubai. Also, to boost the retail sector and thereby mall culture, the government will have to drive growth of shopping malls, as these have the potential to increase tourism in any country. Almost half of the spending in malls in Dubai or Singapore comes from tourists, thereby earning huge foreign exchange for them. Oman mall developers will have to look beyond the small shopping complexes and look to build malls, which not only increase the gross domestic product, but also function as a significant employment generator.
The potential of large destination shopping malls in Oman is huge, but mostly untapped and unexplored. Since the real estate market is undergoing correction, this is the best time to look into this growing sector. Retail-real estate (Malls), is the best bet when it comes to ROI, within the real estate sector and gives the best returns, provided the mall developer understands the Shopping Mall business. Malls should not be looked at as a real estate business, but a retail business, where you partner with retailers and other occupants to enhance the value of the asset.
With the new developments of malls, Oman is all set to keep pace with trends in the Gulf Cooperation Council, the caution however, is that will the mall developers get it right?

Susil Dungarwal is the sole promoter and chief mall mechanic® of Beyond Squarefeet—a shopping mall specialist company, with clients in India, Iran, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman and Qatar. He has been part of the retail and mall industry for over three decades.