DUBAI - The opening day of Dubai’s most awaited business event of the year went as most had expected. A duller affair compared to previous years, Cityscape Dubai 2009 accurately reflected the true state of the country’s real estate market — too many sellers and very few buyers.

At a few minutes before 9am on Monday, it was a smooth drive to Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre, and a walk across the main hall of the venue gave the impression of a normal business day. It was a far cry from the mad rush that visitors encountered at Cityscape in past years.

It took a good hour before a few blue-coloured badges identifying visitors could be spotted among the many red and grey credentials worn by exhibitors and members of the media.

“This is a lot emptier than I had expected,” said Mustafa Emre Sanli, a property broker who has been a regular visitor to Cityscape Dubai since 2006.

Sanli said he was not here to look for deals but wanted to exchange ideas with other market players on how to survive the downturn.

SS Karikalan, whose Chennai-based company makes construction materials, said he had hoped to find some interested parties at the exhibition. “We all know what the industry has been through. It is going to be tough to find new business,” he said.

Even a food vendor at the exhibition complained of poor business. “Last year I had done over 1,500 dirhams by this time (afternoon), but today it has not even crossed 400 dirhams,” said Venkateshwara Rao, who hails from India. “People are not spending.”

Attendance at the venue got only a bit better as the day progressed.

In sharp contrast to the past, no mega projects were launched and only a handful of the exhibitors announced completion or handover dates for their projects. Most telling was Nakheel’s stand which had in its centre a giant model of the almost done-and-dusted Palm Jumeirah. Last year at Cityscape 2008, the company had announced plans to build a kilometer-high tower, the world’s tallest. The project was later put on hold.

A reporter seeking updates from Nakheel got no answers at the company’s stand. An events promoter speaking Russian-accented English advised that no one from Nakheel’s communications department was, or would be, on site.

Khalid Al Malik, the Group Chief Executive Oficer of the newly created property giant Dubai Property Group, said he would want the government and regulatory authorities like RERA to continue improving regulations and transparency in the industry to help it recoup investor confidence and credibility of developers.

Experts speaking on the sidelines and at conferences organized by the exhibition spoke of challenges that the industry faces, from a lack of funding, as banks remain reluctant to lend to property projects and home buyers, to the high incidence of defaults and payment delays.

“On a number of levels, we can say that the worst is already behind us, but banks are looking at the property sector very differently now,” said Blair Hagkull, Managing Director of Middle East and North Africa at property services company Jones Lang Lasalle.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom. Donald Trump, Jr., the son of America’s best-known property mogul, said the zeal and extravagance of Dubai’s property developers might in fact be crucial to the industry’s long-term recovery.

“The thing that made Dubai great was some of this excess,” he said. By way of examples, Trump noted the extravagance of the Burj Al Arab hotel, as well as an effort by one exhibitor at an earlier Cityscape to stand out from the crowd by populating his stand with animated models of Tyrannosaurs.

“Without projects like that…how could Dubai have come as far as it did?”