The Algarve’s IKEA shopping center has been given a name - 'MAR Shopping Algarve' is announced.
Stage one of the enormous development will open next spring with an Ikea store as the main offering. Designer Outlet Algarve is scheduled to open in the summer of 2017 with other retail space to be added in later stages.
As for the name, ‘MAR,’ says Ikea, “is synonymous with the most historical, cultural and emotional aspect of the country."
No great thought went into the name as it’s the same one as used at Ikea in Matosinhos. But none-the-less, the company insists on releasing a press release to keep customers on the boil.
"No other country has a past and a present so closely linked to the sea. The Discoveries, the influence on the success of tourism and on the economy and the image of Portugal, few countries have this element as a strategic asset for their future development," drivels the otherwise perfectly sensible marketing director of IKEA Centres for Europe, Ana Machado.
There’s more, as Machado points out to readers that MAR is a name that reflects the Ikea Group's position of “favouring engagement with the natural elements of the regions in which it operates.”
Using this criteria, Ikea in Matosinhos could equally be called ‘Ikea Oil’ taking the Galp refinery as a reference point.
There is yet more, "the name of our shopping centres in Portugal could only be 'MAR' as after all, we are a country with a coastline of 2,830 km, owner of the 11th largest Exclusive Economic Zone in the world and the largest in the European Union.”
Machado concluded by saying that "the brand ‘MAR Shopping’ today has a very strong connection with the community in which it operates in the north and we believe that Loulé and the Algarve will be identified in the same way with the values it carries: simplicity , sustainability, active community member and promoter of local culture with a great responsibility to contribute to a better day-to-day life of the people who visit us."
MAR Shopping Algarve will grow to 82,000 m² to include Designer Outlet Algarve, the Ikea store as well as an ‘open air’ recreation area. MAR Shopping Algarve will have 220 stores and 3,500 parking spaces when it is completed and will have cost €200 million.
