23 December 2010

BEIRUT: Rania rushes toward the raucous Christmas parade that has been doing the rounds in an elegantly decorated ABC mall in Achrafieh. With a child perched on one of her arms and a nanny and husband trailing closely behind, she barely has time to answer a few questions.

“The atmosphere is very nice,” she exclaims. “But actually, I think that’s because people want it to be nice – deep down we’re very scared,” says Rania. She believes it is “only natural” that people in Lebanon would be pinching pennies this holiday season.

The ABC malls in Achrafieh and Dbayyeh have been bustling with young families and single shoppers over the last two weeks.

For Achrafieh natives it has been the bane of their daily existence, causing thick traffic jams all the way into the late hours of the evening. But many wonder if this offers a glimmer of hope – that is a sign that the economy has defied tensions that have wracked the upper echelons of government over the last few months in order to reap the benefits of the money-spinning holidays.

“Things are much, much better than they were in the last few Christmas seasons that we’ve had,” says Tariq Kharsa, a salesman at a cellphone shop that sits conveniently among a cluster of gift shops on the mall’s top floor. Kharsa says that he has been shocked by the turn-out. “There’s hardly any place to park,” he points out, gesturing toward the mall’s eight-level parking garage.

ABC’s Librarie Antoine branch manager, Nada Zeidan, who these days can mostly be found rummaging through piles of children’s books while conversing with eager mothers, says that it is business as usual. “Sales have been very good. We’re not at all affected [by political developments],” says Zeidan.

But not everyone is so strung up on a cash-milking Christmas spirit, and it appears that very little of the human traffic has trickled out of the shopping mall’s gates. On Makdisi Street in the Hamra area, a historical hub of Lebanese merchants, shop-keepers are more likely found standing outside of their stores than behind the counter.

“There is no Christmas shopping season this year,” says Mahmoud Bafdani of Michelle D’aubra Men’s clothing store. He reports that he has offered discounts as high as 70 percent but that has not caused sales levels to budge.

“People have moved to the shopping malls. They’re easier – and they’re more secure,” says Bafdani. He believes that young families find relative safety in shopping centers that are often beefed up with security guards from the country’s now thriving private security firms.

Special offers are an enduring feature in the Hamra shopping district, with most discounts levels hovering around the 75 percent area.

“Our customers keep asking us for more discounts and that’s how we know that holiday season shopping has gone down,” says Ali Shaoito of Uomo Boss.

“Consumers have new priorities now. People have to decide whether to feed their kids or buy clothing – Lebanon is split between the very rich and the very poor. There’s no in-between anymore,” he adds, indicating that dwindling middle classes have transformed the way that Hamra shop-owners do business.

Even in up-scale ABC, there have been changes in spending habits that shop-owners have discerned.

“People come to us because lingerie and pajamas are relatively inexpensive, but we hear complaints all the time about prices of gold and how people can’t buy it anymore,” says Christopher Karam, regional manager of the lingerie shop K-Lynn. As in most Christmas seasons, the shop has received a significant flow of wide-eyed male customers in recent weeks.

Karam reports that sales have been “only a little bit better” than in previous Christmas seasons. He believes that the ice-storm that crippled travel through Europe has kept a lot of tourists away from the Lebanese economy.

“Having just come here from Dubai, I can tell you that tickets into Beirut are much cheaper than those going out,” says Karam.

Last month, the Tourism Ministry announced that tourist inflows had surpassed the 2 million mark that it had aimed for this year. The number of tourists to Lebanon has risen by 17.6 percent according to November figures. The hospitality sector has also expanded markedly with 1,000 new hotel rooms having been constructed in the last 12 months. “It’s absolutely incredible,” Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud told The Daily Star earlier this week.

But for many in Lebanon, the hype does not match day-to-day realities and up-beat Christmas carols may drown out voices of worry but they do not erase them. “I’m not feeling the Christmas spirit,” says Carole, another onlooker at the ABC Christmas parade. “The music is just that, music. It doesn’t express anything real. If it weren’t for the kids we wouldn’t be coming out here. We’re actually sitting on our nerves ends.”

Copyright The Daily Star 2010.