Shopping as a Love Language: Abu Dhabi’s New Season of Intelligent Luxury

This winter in Abu Dhabi, shopping stops being a private ritual and turns into a shared cultural moment. While the city moves to the rhythm of Eid Al Etihad, the F1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the debut of Sotheby’s Collectors’ Week and the return of Abu Dhabi Finance Week, another storyline quietly unfolds on Al Maryah Island: Unlock Luxury Rewards at The Galleria. A two–week experience running from 1 to 14 December 2025, it feels less like a promotion and more like a statement of intent about what luxury means in the capital right now.

The collaboration behind it is telling. Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO), Darna Rewards by Aldar and The Galleria Al Maryah Island are not simply layering another offer onto a busy festive calendar, they are designing an ecosystem where luxury, culture and value speak the same language. Arriving in a month already charged with flagship events, Unlock Luxury Rewards answers a very modern question: how do you reward a clientele that has seen everything, owns a lot and still wants their experiences to feel considered, intelligent and specific to place?

The Galleria has long been more than a mall, it is Abu Dhabi’s shorthand for curated abundance. Against a waterfront backdrop, over 400 stores and around 70 restaurants translate the vocabulary of global luxury into an everyday lifestyle: CHANEL, DIOR and Hermès for the wardrobe, ZUMA and COYA for the evenings, family entertainment and concept dining for everything in between. It is the kind of place where you could easily forget you are part of any programme at all—which is precisely why the design of Unlock Luxury Rewards matters.

For Darna members, the mechanics are simple enough: spend a cumulative AED 5,000 or more across over 80 participating luxury houses at The Galleria between 1 and 14 December, and unlock up to 15% back in rewards, capped at AED 30,000 per account—an echo of AED 200,000 in eligible spend. Yet behind the numbers sits a more nuanced idea of what “rewarding” means in 2025. Instead of a one–size–fits–all perk, the programme lets guests choose how their luxury comes back to them: as an Aldar Gift Card loaded with 15% of their spend, as 7.5% credited directly back to their linked payment card, or as Darna Points that behave like a soft currency across Aldar’s wider universe of dining, hospitality, retail and leisure. It is loyalty designed less like a punch card and more like a personal edit.

The elegance here lies in how invisible the system is. Guests download the Darna app, register with a UAE number, link a card, and simply shop. Purchases at eligible brands are captured automatically; rewards appear within 15 days, once returns and refunds have had the chance to play out. In an era where time is the ultimate luxury, there is something deeply modern about a programme that works in the background while you move between boutiques, galleries, dinners and races. No queues, no receipts, no forced interaction—just a quiet acknowledgement that your presence, your choices and your loyalty are worth recognising.

In many ways, Unlock Luxury Rewards reads as an essay on the evolution of Abu Dhabi itself. ADIO’s long–term vision is to strengthen the emirate’s luxury ecosystem not only by attracting headline brands, but by investing in the quality of the experiences that surround them: strategic partnerships, thoughtfully engineered value and a retail environment that feels on par with the city’s museums, architecture and cultural institutions. Aldar, through Darna, is reshaping what it means to move through those destinations, turning a day of shopping, dining or staying into one continuous, interconnected narrative.

Text: Editorial team

Сourtesy: Abu Dhabi Investment Office