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However the exhibition upon which the company's initial success was founded - formerly known as Cityscape Dubai - is feeling the pressure in the wake of the 2008 real estate collapse, the flight of foreign capital from the emirate, and heightened risk aversion among investors spooked by the Dubai World debt default.
This year's exhibition, which runs from 27-29 September, is the tenth such annual show to have been held in Dubai. Organizers said more than 28,000 visitors from 102 countries globally attended the 2010 event, and this year they hope to welcome a similar number of investors, developers, financiers, architects, consultants and other real estate professionals. Nevertheless, some analysts are unconvinced the exhibition still retains the pulling power of its pre-crash days, and warn that "smart" investors will steer clear.
"I think attendance will be muted this year," says Majed Azzam, a real estate analyst at AF-HC Securities. "I don't think that the smart thing to do is to buy property on the primary market from developers. The secondary market still offers much better value and you don't really need to go to Cityscape in Dubai to buy property, as there are no new off-plan properties being put on the market."
The exhibition's organisers beg to differ, although they do admit that the event has changed in nature since the heady days of September 2007 and 2008, by which time the real estate crash was just weeks away. "If we look back as recently as 2007, we had [attendees] who you could question whether they were investors or just speculators," says Chris Speller, Group Director at Cityscape Global. "Now people are trying to get a better understanding through a professional forum - people aren't looking for 70% returns because they're being realistic."
"Cityscape has moved on from being just a marketplace just for people wanting to buy investment property," agrees Craig Plumb, Head of Research at Jones Lang LaSalle MENA, which has been represented at every Cityscape event in Dubai since the show's inception, and will be present again in 2011.
"That was clearly its role in 2007 and 2008; in 2010 it had become much more of a business-to-business forum," Plumb continues. "We expect there to be lots of interesting discussion and meetings with clients, but not necessarily much in the way of investors coming to buy property in Dubai. That, arguably, is no longer the function of the Cityscape event."
Investor focus on existing projects
So what is its function, and to whom does the event cater in 2011? At Cityscape Global, Speller insists that investors are still very much a key part of the show. They'll be there in force, he says, although their attention is likely to be focused on projects in which they already have a stake, rather than new opportunities in the off-plan market.
"There are investors coming to the show and we have very good pre-registration from some of the really big investors coming in from all around the world," he contends. "They're coming in to do two things: to seek out opportunities, but mostly to focus on what's happening with projects into which they have already invested. It's about completion and delivery; are these [developers] still trading, and if they are still trading, what phase are they in?"
That's not to say there won't be any new sales.
Staff
