Dressing down

ENAR

It was a common sight this year to see sales assistants lounging on the doorframes of their trendy boutiques in Beirut, sleepily waiting for customers to walk in. Meanwhile, the public was assaulted by a barrage of text messages urging them to benefit from the latest sales, discounts, and ‘unbeatable’ offers. This was a hard year for the retail sector in Lebanon. Retail’s issues are the same as those of other sectors: a lack of wealthy tourists hunting for the latest fashions, coupled with lowered local purchasing power which has caused many Lebanese to downgrade their tastes or skip buying all together, save for necessities.   Figures from Global Blue Lebanon of purchases by tourists who reclaimed their value added tax for the first nine months of 2013 as compared to the same period in 2012, show a decrease in spending across almost all nationalities of tourists, with most significant