I haven't talked much about Dubai Shopping Festival, and I apologize. Let's go ahead and fix that right now.

DSF is exactly what it sounds like - a festival of shopping - pretty much a citywide sale at all of the malls. And it's promoted quite a bit in the region to get shopping tourists into the city.

It's actually kind of goofy, they bill it as the fifth season in Dubai ... the other four? Well, best I can figure they're: summer, surface-of-the-sun-hot, summer #2, and a breezy autumn.

I just read a crazy article, though. This year DSF is taking place in 35 shopping centers around Dubai, covering 14 million square meters (almost 151 million sq ft) of retail, with more than 3,500 stores and outlets participating.

Dang!

But it gets crazier.

The number of shopping malls in Dubai are projected to double in the near future, ultimately covering 40 million square meters (430 million sq ft)!

This reminds me of a report from Colliers International I heard about last March. They found that per capita Dubai residents spend $3,500 annually in mall. But with all of the new malls coming on-line here soon, the number will have to go up to $8,400 by 2010 or the retail space just won't be viable. Leases will be bigger than sales, and whole malls will go broke.

This isn't as insane as it sounds, though, because in the United States the comparative figure is $12,000 a year, while for Europe it is $8,000.

I saw recently that the Mall of the Emirates (where Ski Dubai is) has a Gross Leaseable Area (the interior floor space leased for retail shops, services, restaurants and entertainment) of 225,000 square meters (2.42 million sq ft).

For reference, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota has a GLA of 230,000 square meters (2.47 million sq ft).

Then there's Dubai Mall, down at the base of the Burj Dubai, which opens later this year. They'll have 836,000 square meters (9 million sq ft) of GLA.

Lastly, Mall of Arabia - set to open whenever Dubailand opens - will (theoretically) have 930,000 square meters (10 million square feet). Theoretically.

See? Now this whole "having a festival of shopping" doesn't seem so goofy, does it?