Roksolana Pyrtko: Middle Eastern shopping malls have already surpassed Europe — what this means for the market
Kyiv • UNN
Roksolana Pyrtko, CEO of Roksolana shopping mall and Spartak shopping and entertainment center, states that MENA countries are setting the standards for retail spaces for the next decade. She notes that shopping malls in MENA are full-fledged urban hubs with leisure, education, sports, and developed gastronomy, and are also technologically ahead of Europe.
Roksolana Pyrtko, CEO of the Roksolana Mall and Spartak Entertainment Center, a lawyer and commercial real estate expert, stated in her new blog that the Middle East is now outpacing Europe in the development of shopping malls. According to Pyrtko, it is the MENA countries that are setting the standards of the coming decade and shaping a new model of retail environments, UNN reports.
She notes that in the MENA region malls have long ceased to be only places for shopping and have transformed into full-scale urban hubs — integrating leisure, education, sports, cultural activities and a developed gastronomic scene. Roksolana Pyrtko emphasizes that developers there can design projects "from scratch," without historical restrictions, allowing for more flexible and large-scale concepts.
One of the region’s major advantages, Roksolana Pyrtko says, is technological advancement. In GCC countries, smart parking, interactive navigation, digital services and visitor-flow analytics have long been standard operational tools, while in Europe such solutions are adopted much more slowly.
Roksolana Pyrtko believes that Europe and Ukraine should already be shifting from the "shopping place" model to the "experience and time-spending center" model, investing in leisure infrastructure, digital services and technologies that improve the visitor experience.
At the same time, Ukraine holds a significant advantage in this transition: fewer historical constraints, greater flexibility among developers and a consumer base that readily embraces new formats. This creates an environment where modern mall concepts can be implemented faster than in most European cities, allowing Ukraine to set trends rather than chase them.