United Arab Emirates · vizmaya desk · 2 November 2026

Why Dubai's clothing shops are selling less

Dubai's biggest mall owner collected 9% more rent this year. Its shops sold 13% less. Something odd is going on, and it started on one date.

The puzzle

How can a mall earn more when its shops sell less?

Emaar owns Dubai Mall and other big malls. In the first six months of 2026 it collected 9% more rent than a year earlier, and its operating profit rose 11%.

Over the same months, visits to its malls fell 12.9% and what the shops sold fell 13%.

Source: Emaar, H1 2026 investor presentation. Operating profit is EBITDA. Mall segment, all shop types.

Clue number one

Shoppers who came spent the same. Fewer of them came.

Visits to the malls fell 12.9%. Spending per visit fell just 0.1%. Put those together and you get the 13% drop in sales.

−12.9%
Visits87.3 million this half-year
−0.1%
Spend per visitAbout the same
−13%
Shop salesNearly all of it is the crowd

Source: Emaar, H1 2026 investor presentation. Spend per visit is our sum: 0.87 ÷ 0.871 = 0.999. All shop types, not clothing alone.

Clearing the easy suspects

We checked three easy explanations. None of them fits.

  • "Everyone shops online now."

    We found no official clothes data showing a switch. Lulu's online sales rose 53%, yet its total sales still fell.

    No proof

  • "Eid landed in a different month."

    Eid al-Fitr began on 20 March 2026. A holiday moves sales between months. It does not erase half a year.

    Not the cause

  • "People spent on fun instead."

    Hotels and restaurants did worse, down 5.8% in the first quarter.

    No

Sources: Central Bank of the UAE, Quarterly Economic Review, Sept 2026; WAM, Eid announcement.

Follow the dates

The fall lines up with one date: 28 February.

Dubai was still growing in January, with 2.00 million visitors, 3% more than a year before. Then the war began and air travel was restricted.

  1. The war beginsThe United States and Israel attack Iran .
  2. Eid al-FitrDubai hotels are only 36% full this month.
  3. CeasefireJust 3.5 million guests pass through Dubai's airport.
  4. Skies reopenThe UAE lifts its air restrictions. May brings 4.5 million.
  5. A slow climb5.0 million airport guests.
  6. Best month since FebAbout 869,000 visitors. Hotels 66% full.

Sources: Al-Monitor / AFP; Al Jazeera; Dubai Airports; Dubai Media Office; Dubai DET.

Dubai International Airport

The airport lost almost a third of its guests.

31.3%
fewer guests31.5 million in six months
3.5m
Aprilairport guests
4.5m
Mayairport guests
5.0m
Junea normal 2025 month: 7.9m

This is Dubai's main front door, with a record 95.2 million guests in 2025. It is coming back, but slowly. June was still more than a third short of a normal month.

Source: Dubai Airports, 26 Aug 2026. The 2025 average is our sum: 95.2 million ÷ 12.

Where the tourists sleep

Hotels went quiet: only 36% full in March.

36%
March 2026of hotel rooms filled
66%
August 2026of hotel rooms filled
74%
August 2025for comparison

Visitors fell from 2.00 million in January to about 869,000 in August, which was still the busiest month since February.

Source: Dubai Media Office, 13 Sep 2026. August 2025 is our sum: 66% is 89% of last year's level, so about 74%.

Who carries the risk

The mall owner gets paid first.

98%
of Emaar's mall space is letso the rent keeps flowing

A shop signs a lease with a base rent. That rent is due in a good month and in a bad one. When shoppers stayed away, the shop felt it first.

Source: Emaar, H1 2026 results.

The squeeze

So rent took a bigger bite out of every sale.

Picture a shop that paid 10 dirhams of rent for every 100 it sold. Rent rises 9% and sales fall 13%. Now rent takes 12.5 dirhams of every 100. That is a quarter more.

Part of Emaar's 9% may be new space, so a quarter is the high end. Check your own numbers.

Example, not a measured figure. Built from Emaar's H1 2026 numbers: 1.09 ÷ 0.87 = 1.25.

A second squeeze

Clothes got cheaper while everything else got dearer.

In the second quarter, Dubai prices overall rose 5.3%. Clothing and footwear fell 0.5%.

Shops are not passing their costs on to customers. So rent is up, costs are up, and prices are flat.

Source: Central Bank of the UAE, Quarterly Economic Review, Sept 2026. Dubai consumer prices, change on a year earlier.

The same story from the shop floor

Other big retailers report weak clothes and non-food sales too.

A Babyshop manager at Landmark Group told us the clothes and footwear market has gone down. Numbers from two other big retailers point the same way.

Lulu Retail says lifestyle and electrical goods shrank in the second quarter. Majid Al Futtaim says retail revenue fell 6% in the first half, led by non-food, while its malls earned 12% more.

Sources: Lulu Retail Q2 2026 release; The National, on Majid Al Futtaim's results. Totals include food. Neither gives a clothes-only figure. The Babyshop view is one manager's account.

Why it is not only tourists

Residents seem to be spending more carefully too.

Airport traffic fell 31%, but mall visits fell only 13%. So plenty of people kept shopping, and most of them live here.

Lulu says a weaker shopper mood hurt its non-food sales. The central bank says average pay fell 2.3% in the year to June, while Dubai prices rose 5.3% in the second quarter.

Early signs, not proof Nobody has split clothing sales between residents and tourists.

Sources: Dubai Airports; Emaar; Lulu Retail; Central Bank of the UAE.

What happens next

Three ways the next two years could go.

These are our judgments, not forecasts, and our confidence is low. Our single likeliest road is a fast rebound at 45%, but a slow grind is close behind at 40%.

In a relapse, new trouble in the region closes the airspace again.

Analyst judgment, from the evidence on the earlier slides. Probabilities add up to 100%.

How to know which road

Four numbers will tell us which road we are on.

Each bar shows how far the latest reading is from the line where we would call it a turn-around.

  • Visitors to Dubai, per month
    0.87m in AugustLine: 1.3m
  • Airport guests, per month
    5.0m in JuneLine: 6.5m
  • Hotel rooms filled, vs last year
    89% in AugustLine: 95%
  • Emaar shop sales, next results
    Better than −5%: recovery. Worse than −10%: it lasts.

The lines are our judgment and not tested on past data. Sources: Dubai DET and Dubai Media Office, Dubai Airports, Emaar.

The one thing to do

Ask your landlord for a rent reset for 2027.

+9% rent
−13% sales

Emaar's own numbers are your case. Ask for rent that moves with your sales, or a reset, before your next renewal.

Do not close stores yet. First check two numbers in your own tills: rent as a share of sales, and how much of each store's sales come from tourists.

If Emaar's next results show shop sales flat or up on last year, the case weakens. You lose one round of talks and no store.

Where this comes from

Sources & method

Sources

Method

Every number comes from a company, an airport, a government or the central bank. Numbers marked "our sum" are our own arithmetic. No official clothing-only sales series exists, so the sales evidence is one landlord's malls: all shop types, one company.

Left out because we could not trace them to a first source: anonymous luxury-drop claims and a vendor's e-commerce counts. Majid Al Futtaim's numbers come from a press report of its results, because we could not open the company's own release. The Babyshop view is one manager's account, not a measured figure. More stories at vizmaya.fyi/stories.

Photo credits

  1. Photos load from Wikimedia Commons. Each credit also shows under its picture.