Majid Al Futtaim’s Khalifa Bin Braik on City Centre Deira’s legacy, retail strategy

As City Centre Deira marks three decades at the heart of Dubai’s retail landscape, its legacy reads like a timeline of how modern shopping culture took shape in the region. From pioneering the concept of the integrated family mall in the mid-1990s to evolving into a community-first destination anchored in data, sustainability and experience, the mall’s journey mirrors Dubai’s own transformation.

In this interview with Gulf Business, Khalifa Bin Braik, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim Asset Management, reflects on the pivotal decisions that built City Centre Deira into a regional retail reference point, how it shaped Majid Al Futtaim’s wider mall strategy across five countries, and what the next generation of retail destinations in the Middle East will demand.

City Centre Deira celebrated its 30th anniversary in November. Looking back, what were the pivotal decisions and moments that helped establish it as a regional retail leader?

City Centre Deira wasn’t just a mall that opened three decades ago; it it reshaped how Dubai and the region shop, gather, and experience retail. It set a new benchmark for integrated destinations and became the blueprint that every Majid Al Futtaim asset has built on since.

When it opened on November 28, 1995, it introduced the UAE’s first truly integrated shopping, dining, and entertainment experience. This was a groundbreaking concept at the time, redefining  what a modern, climate-controlled, family-oriented destination could be, and ultimately catalysing the region’s retail revolution.

Several pivotal decisions shaped its success from the start.

Location was the first strategic choice: positioned at a natural crossroads linking old Dubai, the airport, and Sharjah, it was intentionally designed to be “the mall for everyone.” This made it an essential daily touchpoint for surrounding communities and helped it build strong, long-standing relationships with residents.

City Centre Deira also integrated a hypermarket and key everyday services, ensuring it was not only a place for fashion and leisure, but also a hub for weekly essentials. The combination of practicality, convenience, and entertainment turned it into a full-day destination where people could shop, dine, and spend meaningful time together.

This blend of a visionary location, multifunctional design, and a community-first philosophy is what established City Centre Deira as the region’s retail pioneer. Its legacy continues to influence every new Majid Al Futtaim destination, shaping the future of retail across the Middle East.

How has City Centre Deira shaped Majid Al Futtaim’s broader strategy and vision for retail expansion across the Middle East over the past three decades?

City Centre Deira fundamentally shaped Majid Al Futtaim’s vision for retail by proving early on that people wanted more than a place to shop, they wanted destinations that added value to their daily lives. Its role as a community hub became the foundation for our long-term strategy.

From its first days, City Centre Deira demonstrated that integrated, community-first destinations resonate most with consumers. This insight became our blueprint for expansion, influencing every City Centre, Mall of the Emirates, and mixed-use development that followed. It showed us that success comes from creating places that combine retail, dining, entertainment, and essential services within a space people feel conn

ected to.

City Centre Deira also taught us the importance of long-term partnerships. Carrefour began as a single hypermarket in Deira and has since evolved into a regional anchor across our portfolio. Likewise, many international brands that entered the UAE through Deira are now part of our wider retail ecosystem,  reinforcing the value of being a gateway destination.

A key lesson that continues to guide us is relevance. As consumer behaviour shifts, so must our offering. Continuous reinvestment, refreshing experiences, and staying close to our communities remain central to our strategy – principles that originate from Deira’s legacy.

Today, Majid Al Futtaim operates 29 shopping malls across five countries, along with a growing portfolio of mixed-use communities, hotels, and leisure destinations. All are built on the core idea that City Centre Deira proved: when you create places for life, not just places to shop, you build destinations that evolve, endure, and stay meaningful for generations.

Consumer expectations have evolved dramatically over the last 30 years. How has the mall adapted to changing shopper behaviours and the rise of digital retail?

Over the past 30 years, consumer expectations have shifted from simply visiting a mall to wanting a seamless, personalised experience that moves effortlessly between physical and digital touchpoints. At City Centre Deira, we’ve adapted by becoming smarter, more connected, and more responsive to how people live today – while doubling down on what physical retail does best: human connection, discovery, and shared experiences.

A major part of this transformation is the integration of City Centre Deira into our SHARE loyalty ecosystem, which now connects millions of members across our malls, communities, hotels, cinemas, leisure destinations, and Carrefour. Through SHARE, guests are recognised and rewarded wherever they interact with Majid Al Futtaim, allowing us to link in-mall activity with digital behaviours and provide more personalised offers and seamless journeys.

At the same time, we’ve continually enhanced the physical experience so digital complements – rather than replaces – the visit. This includes upgraded interiors, refreshed dining and social spaces, improved accessibility such as the direct Metro connection, and investments in sustainability and intuitive wayfinding to keep the destination fresh, relevant, and easy to navigate.

While data and digital capabilities will continue to elevate how we personalise the journey, the heart of every City Centre remains community and human connection. Whether watching the latest blockbuster, discovering a new restaurant, or finding the perfect outfit, our aim is to create meaningful moments that turn into lasting memories – experiences no online channel can replicate.

With 29 malls across the region and new projects like Ghaf Woods and the Dhs5bn Mall of the Emirates expansion, how do you balance growth, innovation and operational excellence?

We operate our destinations as a unified portfolio rather than isolated assets. This scale allows us to incorporate essential non-negotiables – exceptional guest experiences, strict safety, energy efficiency, advanced digital features, and strong brand partnerships across our 29 malls. While upholding these principles, each mall is carefully developed for its community, habits, needs, and character, ensuring a high standard that respects local nuances rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach.

Central to balancing these elements is our use of data and analytics. A unified data infrastructure allows us to monitor footfall patterns, dwell times, spending behaviours, category performance, and emerging lifestyle trends across our entire portfolio. These insights inform our leasing strategies, experience curation, and reinvestment decisions, helping us adapt to evolving preferences.

For example, the Dhs5bn redevelopment of Mall of the Emirates reflects this adaptive approach, responding to precise consumer demands for more luxury, cultural offerings, wellness options, and indoor–outdoor spaces. Similarly, shifts towards nature-inspired living influence developments like Ghaf Woods, making lifestyle trends and consumer preferences central to our planning.

In parallel, operational discipline ensures all these efforts are cohesive and sustainable. We apply globally recognised frameworks for customer experience, health and safety, and sustainability across all assets. We rigorously monitor energy consumption and operational performance with the same diligence as we do financial results, creating a consistent standard that extends across our network.

This disciplined approach not only enhances the potential of each destination but also reassures guests and partners that safety, reliability, and quality are upheld uniformly, wherever they encounter our brand.

Sustainability and community engagement are increasingly important for retail developments. How has Majid Al Futtaim incorporated these elements into its malls and long-term strategy?

For Majid Al Futtaim, sustainability is not a parallel workstream; it is the way we run the business. Over the past decade, we have embedded clear environmental targets into the way our malls are designed, operated and upgraded. As a result, Majid Al Futtaim Malls have achieved 11 LEED EBOM certificates at the Platinum level and one at the Gold level, with flagship assets such as Mall of the Emirates, City Centre Deira, City Centre Bahrain and City Centre Muscat operating to LEED Platinum standards for operations and maintenance.

This approach has also been recognised externally, with consistent Green Star ratings from GRESB and multiple honours at the 2025 MENA Green Building Awards, including Sustainable Developer of the Year, as well as awards for our sustainability training, Ghaf Woods and our “Strategically Green” retail framework. Together, these milestones confirm that environmental performance is built into our model, not added afterwards.

City Centre Deira is a clear example of how this translates into a living asset. Nearly 30 years after opening, the mall now operates to a modern platinum standard thanks to continuous retrofits, smarter building systems and a data-driven focus on energy, water and emissions. Most of these changes are invisible to customers, but they ensure the mall remains efficient, comfortable and resilient. Just as importantly, they have been implemented.

Aside from the environmental aspect of sustainability, a core pillar for us at Majid Al Futtaim is giving back to the communities we operate in. For example, City Centre Deira has stood as a cornerstone of the community for over 30 years, tailoring moments and celebrations for our key demographics. This includes everything from celebrating Philippines National Day, Onam, Christmas and more – to free yoga and karaoke. Our commitment to supporting local stories and entrepreneurs is evident through engaging campaigns, charity initiatives, and pop-up collaborations that celebrate the community’s rich culture.

To ensure inclusivity, we have also adopted the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Programme across our malls, training staff to discreetly assist guests with non-visible disabilities, creating a welcoming and accessible environment for everyone.

Looking ahead, what are the key trends or innovations you see shaping the future of retail in the region, and how is Majid Al Futtaim preparing to lead?

Across the Middle East, retail is moving decisively toward experience-led destinations, where shopping is just one part of a much richer day out. Increasingly, guests expect places where they can discover new brands, connect with culture, focus on wellness, learn, and be entertained – often in a single visit.

At the same time, AI and data are reshaping how we understand and serve those expectations. Through our digital platforms and loyalty ecosystem, we are already able to recognise preferences, anticipate needs, and personalise each journey – whether someone is with us for ten minutes to pick up an item or for an entire day with their family. The next chapter of retail will belong to those who can combine this level of intelligence with a deeper sense of responsibility and human-centric approach.

That is why sustainability now sits at the core of how we think about the future of our destinations. Customers, regulators, and partners are no longer asking whether we are responsible – they are asking how far and how fast we can go. Our ambition is that every new project and every significant reinvestment should simultaneously elevate the guest experience, reduce our environmental footprint, and future-proof the asset. This alignment of expertise, technology, and sustainability is the backdrop against which we are marking 30 years of City Centre Deira and, with it, rethinking what a Majid Al Futtaim destination should be for the next generation and beyond.

Rather than asking how to build “another mall”, we are asking what excellence looks like for tomorrow’s guests and communities. That mindset is driving flagship initiatives such as Ghaf Woods – our next-generation community concept – and the transformation of Mall of the Emirates, where we are honouring a strong legacy while redesigning every element through the lens of experience, digital enablement, and sustainability. Having helped shape modern retail in the Middle East over the past three decades, we are now focused on leading its next era: creating destinations that are unmistakably experience-driven, intelligently data-powered, and uncompromisingly environmentally responsible for many years to come.