Cityscape Ends; To Be Scaled Back in 2010

As this week’s Cityscape Dubai property show wound down without major property launches or deals, the show’s organizer said that Cityscape 2010 would be reconfigured as a more low-key, business-to-business affair. “We want the event to cater to the industry rather than the consumer or end-users,” Cityscape Managing Director Rohan Marwaha told Khaleej Times on Thursday. “Our focus is to develop a new format. In the coming months, we will be discussing with our clients what changes we need to incorporate. It will certainly not be business as usual.” The annual event, which has now ended its eight year, had earned a degree of notoriety for attracting people who queued for long hours, cheque books in hand, to book their dream homes during the property market’s bonanza years. Cityscape finished this week on a subdued note, with preliminary estimates showing a 50 per cent drop in visitors. Marwaha estimated that the four-day show drew about 39,000 visitors compared with over 68,000 in 2008. Participants in the fair launched no new properties this time, nor did they conclude any deals. Cityscape was originally intended to be a business-to-business event, he said. However, in recent years it has become a venue for mega project launches and glamour girls hawking minutely-detailed scale models of multi-billion real estate developments. “The current business model of focusing on sales was not sustainable.

But it was demanded by the exhibitors, as they needed to attract end-user interest. In a way, we are back to where we started,” Marwaha said. Since Cityscape 2008, Dubai’s property market has collapsed. Home prices have slumped by up to 50 per cent from last year’s peaks, lending has slowed, and, by some estimates, close to $300 billion worth of construction work has been delayed or cancelled. Many players were hoping that this year’s Cityscape, a barometer of sentiment for Dubai’s real-estate sector, would kick-start activity in the emirate’s stalled property market, but the lackluster mood in the exhibition halls suggested otherwise. Developers said they were focusing instead on completing projects and retaining existing customers. “2009 is the year of the customer, rather than new projects,” said Markus Giebel, chief executive of Dubai’s second-largest developer Deyaar. This week’s event was a far cry from last year’s fair, when men dressed as Zulu warriors alternately danced and lounged next to a scale model of AmaZulu World, a development slated for South Africa, by Ruwaad, a U.A.E.-based company. One of last year’s highlights was the launch of Meraas Development’s $95 billion project called Jumeirah Gardens. The sprawling scale model drew crowds of visitors.

This year, though Meraas’ model was on display, the crowds were smaller and the Dubai government-backed real-estate developer acknowledged that it was scaling down its plans. “We looked at the market, the investors, the changing real estate scenario,” said Sina Al Kazim, Meraas’ chief business development officer. Yet in spite of the gloom at this week’s show, participants spoke of signs of a gradual recovery and of clues that the market had at least hit bottom. “Perhaps what we’re seeing, is a new realism, a reality check,” said Blair Hagkull, regional managing director of real estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle. Marwaha, the show’s organiser, said that going forward, Cityscape needs to make conference sessions more accessible and more affordable. “We need to develop a lot more content, perhaps more private round table discussions concerning the industry.” This week’s show felt as if it was two days too long, but Marwaha said it would remain a four-day event. “It is now an accepted international standard to have a four-day conference. It will remain a four-day event.” He added: “We need to have a sustainable model. We must consistently provide quality content. It should be a business-to-business event where expertise can be shared, knowledge can be shared — an event where companies come together to forge partnerships.”