Dubai
Clutching bags from designer boutiques in their gloved hands, customers are back at Dubai Mall, one of the world’s largest shopping havens that has reopened under strict safeguards against coronavirus.
At a main entrance where customers hand over their sports cars and luxury SUVs for valet parking, employees greet them with black T-shirts reading “Welcome back”. Smiling as they point an infrared thermometer “temperature gun” at visitors’ foreheads, they check for the fever that is a telltale symptom of COVID-19 infection. Dubai Mall is a key attraction of the city state that has built its wealth and world renown on mega-projects and a diversified economy to become a tourism and shopping hub, as well as for finance and real estate.
With more than 1,300 stores arrayed around a vast lake and overlooked by the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower, Dubai Mall attracts some 80 million visitors a year and its reopening on Tuesday was a symbolic step as the country emerges from lockdown.
After a month-long closure, crowds have been far thinner, as expatriates in jeans and Emiratis in traditional white Gulf robes roam the bright alleys that showcase everything from chic to bling.
Among them was Jamal, a 21-year-old Emirati student who before the coronavirus crisis would come every weekend with his friends. Holding two red bags from a famous French jewellery brand in his hands, he was delighted to be back and reassured by the security measures in place.—AFP
