Mall and community developer Majid Al Futtaim is looking to reinvent the future of in-person shopping after the pandemic moved a significant slice of purchasing online.
Lockdowns implemented to curb the spread of Covid-19 temporarily shuttered malls and other retail outlets last year, and online retail and e-commerce spiked – a trend many predict is here to stay.
But Majid Al Futtaim’s business model relies on physical footfall, and the leadership recognises the future is digital and they must pivot to get customers in their malls, the newest of which, Mall of Oman, opened last week in Muscat and will provide some 3,500 direct and indirect jobs.
Shopping malls are focusing on “augmenting customer experience across the assets, focusing on culture, leisure, entertainment, wellness, beauty, food and beverage”, Shireen El Khatib, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim Shopping Malls, said during a media round table on Monday.
“All these categories can’t be online. You have to be in a physical space to enjoy them,” she added. “For us to be realistic, the future is definitely an integration of both physical and digital and we call it ‘phygital,”.
In Oman, Majid Al Futtaim has created some 30,000 direct and indirect jobs in their two decades of work in the country, Khatib said. The Dubai-headquartered business is looking to expand its depth in the sultanate.
“We continue to be quite bullish in the future for Oman, and we believe we’re playing a role in recovery and in reshaping of real estate,” Hawazen Esber, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim Communities, said at the roundtable. The developer has invested around $2 billion in the country in the 20 years it has operated there.
Last year, Oman’s overall economy shrank 2.8 percent, but it is expected to rebound to 2.5 percent growth this year as a vaccine rollout helps domestic activity and external demand picks up, the IMF predicted in its latest findings released on Sunday.
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