Doha Festival City mall has unveiled its brand positioning “It’s my place, my choice” tailored for 2023.
Owned and operated by Al Futtaim, the Doha Festival City is a 600,000 square metres shopping mall located north of the capital Doha in Umm Salal Mohammed. The mall was built at a cost of QR6 billion (~$1.6 billion) and opened in 2017.
The new branding is part of Qatar’s vision to gain more visitors and develop the country as a shopping destination as well as a tourist attraction.
Commenting on the announcement Robert Hall, Festival City General Manager, said: “We enjoyed a speeding start for the year with our partnerships with Qatar Charity and Hamad Medical Corporation and our platinum sponsorship of the Qatar Balloon Festival, and we are not slowing down. We have a powerful lineup of events and activations prepared for this year to truly deliver amazing experiences to our visitors and enhance their journey with us with more unique offerings”.
From his part, Jihad Zarkout, Bawabat al-Shamal Real Estate Company’s General Manager, said: “We are starting this year with a new approach and positioning to reinforce the mall’s position as a destination of choice for all our visitors of all ages in Qatar. This entails offering them a wider, more diverse range of unique experiences, leaving them with fond memories and enticing them to visit us again.
As a major Qatari company, we also aim to strengthen the role we play in supporting national awareness and development campaigns and initiatives under our #FestivalCares CSR programme in cooperation with our partners in Qatar and abroad to enhance our contribution toward Qatar’s development and the realisation of Qatar National Vision 2023 and beyond.”
The new brand positioning comes amid a running start of the year for Doha Festival City, with the launch of its platinum partnership with the Qatar Balloon Festival, a 10-day event featuring 50 hot air balloons from around the world. The event will allow more than 1000 people to experience the pleasure of flying in one of these creations and promote Qatar as a welcoming destination.
The mall also launched its #FestivalCares CSR initiatives for the year with its partnership with Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) for the flu vaccination campaign which will last from 13 to 26 January. The campaign features a booth located on the first floor between Debenhams and Marks and Spencer open daily from 1PM to 9PM in which health professionals from HMC are present to raise awareness regarding the importance of protecting oneself against the disease and to administer the vaccine to the mall’s visitors and customers.
The mall is also hosting a charity exhibition in cooperation with Qatar Charity’s (QC) Colors and Sounds project. The exhibition, which is being held from 23 to 31 January under the umbrella of #FestivalCares, features the works of artists who donated their paintings to QC under the project to support the organisation’s winter charity campaign.
Doha Festival City has lined up in its calendar for this year a series of events and initiatives that will provide world-class entertainment and raise awareness about societal issues.
Doha Festival City is home to famous brand names in retail, many of which have made their Qatar debut, including Harvey Nichols, Charlotte Tilbury, Kiehl’s, Dior Beauty Boutique, and ACE. It also houses the country’s only IKEA, which has been open since 2013. The mall also won the 2020 Travelers’ Choice Award by Tripadvisor, based on a full year of Tripadvisor reviews, placing the Mall in the top 10% of the hospitality sector in the world. It is the first fully certified sustainable mall in Qatar (Certification by GORD), receiving a 3-star GSAS Design & Build certification by the Gulf Organization for Research and Development (GORD).
