Inside Dubai’s first mall in the metaverse: Here is what you can do in the virtual shopping centre

Inside Dubai’s first mall in the metaverse: Here is what you can do in the virtual shopping centre

You can do everything from buying groceries to watching movie trailers

Published: Sun 12 Mar 2023, 6:00 AM

From browsing through the latest designs of hoodies to watching movie trailers, Khaleej Times enjoyed spending a few hours inside Dubai's first virtual mall. The Mall of the Metaverse will represent Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) in Decentraland and is the perfect playground for their increasingly Web 3 savvy clientele.

Inaugurated last month, the mall is in the initial phase of development as the group looks "closely" at customers' needs and expectations. “We are a customer-centric and innovative company; thus we want to make sure we are available to our consumers wherever they are whether in a city or in a virtual world,” said Fatima Zada, director of Omnichannels and Digital, Majid Al Futtaim Shopping Malls

Once we arrived at the mall in Decentraland, the first step was to take a mandatory photo at the entrance of the mall which has the signature MAF logo. We walked into the building which had a smaller version of Ski Dubai at the entrance. The poster of a little kid enjoying the snow made us smile. However, we didn’t know how to pass on the smile to our avatar. To