Hannah puts on her comfy walking shoes and grabs her credit cards to take us on a tour of the world’s largest shopping centres. 

Almost every female that I know loves to shop, including yours truly, so I jumped at the opportunity to see one of the largest shopping malls in the world on a recent holiday (even if it meant drastically altering our itinerary which resulted in two days of non-stop driving to make it to a pre-booked flight).

Edmonton, Canada’s Festival City, is known as the “Gateway to the Canadian North” and to the breathtakingly beautiful Canadian Rockies.  As the capital of the Canadian province Alberta, Edmonton has a unique personality, being known for its cleanliness, cosmopolitan, rich culture and professional sports.  More importantly, Edmonton is home to the West Edmonton Shopping Mall.  

Before my holiday I failed to comprehend how a shopping centre could contain an amusement park, a water park, deep sea adventure (including a replica of Columbus’ ship, the Santa Maria), miniature golf course, an ice skating rink and not to mention over 800 specialty stores plus 110 eating establishments.  However, when you are there it just seems so normal!

There is no need to feel daunted when driving into the heart of Edmonton, a city of just over 1 million people in the metro area.  Being its largest tourist attractions, the Shopping Mall enjoys excellent signage and is hard to miss, considering that the Mall spans the equivalent of 48 city blocks. 

The West Edmonton Mall provides some 350,000m2 of Gross Lettable Area (GLA), making this massive centre twice the size of Chadstone Shopping Centre, Australia’s largest centre, after its current extensions.  In addition to the features mentioned earlier, the centre contains 6 major department stores, 21 movie theatres, a bingo hall, chapel, bungy jumping, an IMAX 3D Theatre and a 354 room hotel.  Impressively, the Mall provides 58 entrances, 325,000 light fixtures, over 23,500 employment opportunities and parking for over 20,000 vehicles. 

I was disappointed and excited at the same time when I discovered that the West Edmonton Mall was no longer the largest in the world (disappointed because I now couldn’t say that I had been to the biggest shopping centre in the world but excited at the possibilities of a bigger centre).  It is understood that the West Edmonton Mall was the world’s largest mall for a 27 year period from 1981 until only recently.

So which Shopping Mall does achieve the title of being the largest in the world?  Well, this is a hotly contended issue and is perhaps as competitive as the tallest building in the world.

The shopping mall construction boom in Asia has attracted much media attention over the past few years.  An American Study claims that eight of the ten largest malls in the world were in Asia in early 2008, with the South China Mall in Dongguan, China, as the largest, offering a GLA of approximately 660,000m2.  This study places the West Edmonton shopping mall as the 4th largest centre, behind the South China Mall and Jun Yuan Mall in China and the SM Mall of Asia in the Phillipines.

It is understood that several more mega-malls in China and the United Arab Emirates are under construction.  Dubai is quickly making a name for itself in the retail therapy department with the construction of two very impressive Malls.  Mall of Emirates provides 223,000m2 of retail area on 3 levels and also offers a ski slope along with chair lifts, toboggan runs, snowmen, children’s snow play grounds and real snow.  Mind you, this is all in the middle of the desert!  

The soon to open Dubai Mall will be even larger than Mall of Emirates.  With a total internal floor area of close to 550,000m2 and a gross lettable area of around 350,000m2.  One of the main attractions of the Dubai Mall will be the world’s largest single volume aquarium which will contain more than 36,000 fish and marine animals.  

 

  Mall of Emirates

Many of these large mega-malls function as a total resort in itself and it seems that this is the way of the future.  With the inclusion of international hotels, guests can fly or drive into the City, check into the hotel, stay for a few days, go shopping, skiing, dining at restaurants, night-clubbing, watch a movie, or whatever else is on offer without even having left the shopping mall!

Mmm, I think Dubai will have to be my next holiday destination…

By: Hannah Seymour