Digging into your neighbour’s pockets

If you happen to be an Abu Dhabi resident, your favorite neighbour, Dubai (Mall of the Emirates, to be precise) wants to honor the proximity and offer you exclusive deals and discounts as part of their ‘Welcome, Abu Dhabi Neighbour’ Promotion.

After proving you are from Abu Dhabi (e.g. driving license issued from Abu Dhabi), you get a voucher book with coupons for discounts from several outlets at the mall. The promotion runs from April 30 to May 9, and the vouchers are valid unitl 31 July.

Have Dubai people stopped shopping recently, or are less tourists coming and spending their money in Dubai that the malls are trying to get a share of Abu Dhabi people’s pockets? Or maybe Mall of the Emirates is trying to retain its existing Abu Dhabi people market share, as it is probably now facing fierce competition from Dubai Mall, the recently opened largest mall in the world and the popular outdoor shopping/leisure venue The Walk – JBR.

All in all, it is a good promotion for Abu Dhabians. And ofcourse it does make us feel special to have something especially for us, and they preferred  us over their other neighbour – Sharjah! I just think the promotion should have run longer as April 30th – May 9th means 2 weekends only (Abu Dhabi people would go to Dubai on weekends). By the time the offer was announced (press, lampposts and radio ads started on or just before the day of the promotion, if I recall correctly). By the time people started asking and the promotion spread by word-of-mouth, the first weekend was missed and this left us with only one weekend to go to Dubai and collect the voucher book and make use of this promotion. Other than that, they could have used more targetted communication channels like door-to-door leaflets to ensure maximum reach to Abu Dhabi residents. But that’s just my word of advice – neighbour to neighbour.