Dubai Mall, the World's largest shopping centre

The massive expansion of The Dubai Mall, the world’s largest shopping and entertainment destination has commenced in preparation to welcome over 100 million annual visitors to the mall. With the first phase expansion by 1 million sq ft, the fashion portfolio of the mall will further strengthened, enhancing the city’s high end retail offerings. To be expanded further, the Fashion Avenue in The Dubai Mall will add new and personalized flagship stores of the world’s most renowned brands. The overall expansion will also bring in other high-end lifestyle and entertainment brands to The Dubai Mall

With the commencement of The Dubai Mall expansion to welcome 100 million visitors an alternate Fashion Avenue Entrance with valet parking has been set up in the parking lobby of Fashion Parking Level 3 to assure seamless visitor experience. All parking areas & valet services remain available across the mall.

The Dubai Mall is the world's largest shopping mall based on total area and fourteenth largest by gross leasable area. Located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (U.A.E), it is part of the 20-billion-dollar Downtown Dubai complex, and includes 1,200 shops.Access to the mall is provided via Doha Street, rebuilt as a double-decker road in April 2009.

Twice delayed, Dubai Mall opened on 4 November 2008, with about 635 retailers, marking the world's largest-ever mall opening in retail history. However it is not the largest in gross leasable space, and is surpassed in that category by several malls including the South China Mall, which is the world's largest, Golden Resources Mall, SM City North Edsa, and SM Mall of Asia.

The Dubai Mall recorded 60,000 tickets sold for the Dubai Aquarium and Discovery Centre in the first five days, following its opening. The Dubai Mall hosted over 37 million visitors in 2009, and attracts more than 750,000 visitors every week. while in 2010 it hosted 47 million, and saw footfall increase by around 27 percent over 2009, despite the economic crisis. In 2012, Dubai Mall continued to hold title of world's most-visited shopping and leisure destination, and attracted more than 65 million visitors, an increase of more than 20 percent compared to the 54 million recorded in 2011. It attracted more visitors than New York City with over 52 million tourists in 2012, and Los Angeles with 41 million. The numbers also surpass visitor arrivals to all landmark leisure destinations and theme parks in the world including Times Square (39.2 million), Central Park (38 million), and Niagara Falls (22.5 million).
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Outside Dubai Mall near the Fountain.
Over 13 million square foot (equivalent in size to more than 50 football fields ), the Dubai Mall has a total internal floor area of 5.9 million square feet (55 ha) and leasable space of 3.77 million square feet (35 ha), about the same as the West Edmonton Mall.[14]

It also has a 250-room luxury hotel, 22 cinema screens plus 120 restaurants and cafes. The Mall has over 14,000 parking spaces across 3 car parks, with valet services and a car locator ticketing system.[15] The mall has won five awards – two awards at the Retail Future Project Awards at Mapic, Cannes, in 2004, for Best Retail Development Scheme (Large) and Best Use of Lighting in a Retail Environment[16] and the Dubai Mall brochure collected three awards at the Summit Creative Awards 2005 in Portland, Oregon – the Gold award for Best Art Direction / Graphic Design, Silver award for Best 4-colour B2B Brochure, and a Judges Special Recognition award.

The shark tunnel of Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo
The Mall's Dubai Aquarium and Discovery Centre, developed and operated by Oceanis Australia Group, having one of the world's largest Acrylic Panel" (32.88 m wide × 8.3 m high × 750 mm thick and weighing 245,614 kg).[17] The acrylic viewing panel is larger than Japan's Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium (22.5 m wide × 8.2 m high and 600 mm thick), smaller than Singapore's S.E.A Aquarium (36 m wide × 8.3 m high) and China's Chime-Long Ocean Kingdom (39.6 m wide × 8.3 m high). Its 750 mm thick acrylic viewing panel can withstand pressure of 10 million litres of water used in the aquarium, but its transparency gives visitors clear views of over 33,000 marine animals on display. In February 2010, a leak in the aquarium caused a partial evacuation and brief shutdown of a portion of the mall.