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Al-Futtaim Real Estate’s UAE malls portfolio recorded an 8% year-on-year sales uplift during Ramadan and Eid 2026, with Dubai Festival City Mall up 12% and footfall up 5%. Across the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the results are no longer anecdotal, and the era of the department store anchor is over. GCC mall operators are building tenant ecosystems where food and beverage (F&B), entertainment and wellness are the primary footfall drivers – and where leasing speed and accuracy depend on the data behind them.
From Anchor Store to Experience Anchor
The shift in what constitutes an anchor tenant has been rapid and structural across the GCC. Majid Al Futtaim reported a 6% increase in revenue from its shopping malls and hotels business to AED 4.8 billion in FY2025, with footfall and tenant performance continuing to strengthen (a result attributed to its pivot toward experience-led retail). Its planned AED 5 billion transformation of Mall of the Emirates signals how much investment is flowing into repositioning flagship assets around entertainment and dining rather than traditional fashion anchors.
The performance data supports the strategy. Dubai’s super-regional malls remain at 95-99% occupancy, supported by long waitlists and consistent tenant demand (Cushman & Wakefield Core). Centres with more than 35% of GLA in non-retail uses have recorded footfall growth of 8 to 15%, outperforming sector averages. This is the new operating model across UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The Saudi Pipeline: A Leasing Administration Challenge at Scale
Saudi Arabia is projected to add 4.9 million sqm of retail development across its five largest cities by 2030, with over half incorporating entertainment and dining concepts. Riyadh alone already has 4.17 million sqm of GLA as at H1 2025, with major projects including The Avenues Riyadh and Diriyah Square adding a further 600,000 sqm – both positioned as experience-led destinations (Knight Frank, The Saudi Report 2025). Meanwhile, JLL records just 2.1% super-regional mall vacancy against 9.7% for regional malls – a divergence that tells asset managers precisely where to focus repositioning capital.
Central to that pipeline is a fundamental shift in tenant demand. F&B is no longer an amenity – it is a primary demand driver. JLL’s Saudi Arabia Retail Market Dynamics Q1 2026 confirms that F&B and experiential segments are the primary footfall drivers across Riyadh and Jeddah. Every major new development is being designed around this reality. Every operator managing it faces a leasing administration challenge structurally different from the department store era – more tenants, more complex lease structures, more turnover rent provisions, more renewal cycles and more category-level performance data to track.
The Operational Layer Behind Tenant Curation Decisions
Tenant curation has moved from an art to a data-driven discipline. McKinsey research identifies the use of consumer behaviour data and forecast analytics – understanding how different tenant combinations perform collectively – as the defining capability separating high-performing mall operators from the rest. That capability depends on connected lease administration, category-level NOI tracking and real-time turnover rent reconciliation, a foundational layer many GCC operators have not yet built.
The gap between knowing what the tenant mix should be and acting on that knowledge quickly is almost always an operational one. A leasing team identifying an underperforming F&B cluster and looking to reposition it needs to understand simultaneously:
- which leases are approaching expiry
- what turnover rent provisions are in play
- what the category-level NOI contribution of each affected unit is
- what the projected yield improvement looks like against the capex required to refit for a new tenant
When that information sits across disconnected systems, the decision cycle is slow, the analysis is incomplete and the repositioning opportunity is missed.
The upside of getting this right is equally well documented. AI-powered tenant mix analysis can increase overall centre traffic by 15 to 25% when built on clean, connected data. Individual store sales can also rise by 8 to 15% through traffic flow improvements driven by smarter placement decisions.
Why Manual Leasing Administration Cannot Scale
The Saudi retail market is growing at a pace that makes manual leasing administration structurally unworkable. Riyadh’s total retail stock is expected to reach 5.2 million sqm in 2026 (a 20% increase in two years), with developers prioritising experiential formats and over half of upcoming projects incorporating entertainment zones, dining experiences and cinemas. Each carries a lease, a renewal cycle, a turnover rent calculation and a common area maintenance (CAM) reconciliation obligation.
At that volume, manual administration becomes unsustainable. For operators managing portfolios across Riyadh, Jeddah and beyond, the question is not whether to adopt a connected retail management platform – it’s how quickly. A purpose-built retail management solution that connects lease administration, turnover rent reconciliation, category-level NOI tracking and renewal cycle management within a single system removes that burden. It gives leasing teams and asset managers the operational speed to act on tenant curation decisions as soon as the data supports them – rather than waiting for a manual process to catch up.
How to Measure Success: The Metrics That Matter
For a CEO or MD, the tenant mix conversation needs to move from qualitative repositioning narratives to measurable outcomes. The metrics that matter most in GCC mall management can only be produced reliably when leasing, financial and operational data are connected within a single system.
Sales per sqm by category: Tracked across F&B, fashion, entertainment and wellness, this metric gives asset managers a clear view of which parts of the tenant mix are driving yield and which are diluting it – a distinction only visible when turnover rent data flows in real time from lease administration into financial reporting.
Renewal rate by category: A high renewal rate signals tenant confidence and rent growth potential – a low rate signals underperformance or a repositioning opportunity. Knowing which leases are approaching expiry by category across the full portfolio is the starting point for every proactive tenant conversation.
NOI contribution by tenant category: Blended portfolio averages mask the performance differential between categories. Category-level NOI data is the evidence that makes a repositioning case credible. It also shows what yield is being left on the table by retaining an underperforming anchor and what a well-curated F&B or entertainment operator could deliver in its place.
For marketing and leasing teams, these metrics directly strengthen the quality of anchor and F&B negotiations. A leasing professional who can show a prospective tenant how their category performs across the portfolio, backed by actual turnover rent and footfall data, is in a fundamentally stronger negotiating position than one presenting a standard leasing deck.
Turning Tenant Curation into a Competitive Advantage
Tenant mix has always determined the performance of a GCC mall. What has changed is the speed and precision with which the best operators can act on that knowledge. With a connected retail management platform that unifies management operation and data, you can put that capability within reach.
For operators looking to go a step further and manage their tenant mix as a data-driven strategy, a dedicated data connect service that unites tenant performance, footfall and financial metrics into a single, live dashboard view will sharpen every curation decision and maximise their NOI.
See how Yardi’s retail management solution helps GCC mall operators connect lease administration, NOI tracking and tenant curation decisions with a cloud solution.
