"It's been a tough year. Retailing is hard work, particularly in Rotorua," he said. "We have one reasonable day and after that it's dead for the next couple of days."
He believed the situation would not be helped by the development of retail centres on the fringes of the city, such as the Redwoods Centre on the corner of Tarawera Rd and Te Ngae Rd.
"We should be consolidating in the CBD for economic development."
Mr Emirali said customers often asked him why Rotorua central was so dead, particularly on weekends.
"Saturday used to be one of our busiest trading days, now it's one of the worst."
However he remains positive that things will pick up.
Rotorua Chamber of Commerce chief executive Roger Gordon said it would be interesting to see a breakdown of exactly where the growth in spending was.
"My perception is the retail outlets that are benefiting the most are the national chains like you see around Rotorua Central Mall. They have got large buying advantages and appear to be continually having sales which is encouraging retail," he said. "Smaller retailers that I have talked to are finding it particularly hard."
He said examples of this were the recent sale of clothing store Serious Fun to an out-of-town chain, the impending closure of record store Marbecks and the recent closure of Seduction Lingerie.
It wasn't all bad news though.
Rockshop manager Daryl Cogger said 2012 had started well at his Eruera St store.
"We're up on last year - I don't know for sure how much but probably about 5 per cent," he said. "The value of each sale has gone down but the number of sales has increased so overall we have increased turnover."
He said he had noticed more people through the doors than last year so was feeling positive about the future.
That sentiment was echoed by McLeods Booksellers manager Fraser Newman.
He said since the business moved from Tutanekai St to Pukuatua St six months ago things were looking up, despite a downward trend in the book industry worldwide.
"We have less people wandering past but they are spending more," he said. "The average spend has probably gone from $25 to $35."
He said June and July were one of the busiest times for booksellers as people hunkered down over the winter with a book, so the last few weeks had been noticeably busier.
NAI Harcourts' Paul Sanford said Rotorua's retail industry was going through a transitional period at the moment and admitted interest in stores in the CBD was quieter than in the past.
"There are probably a few more empty shops on Tutanekai St but in general not a massive amount," he said. "The trend right now is to the developments out of the CBD."
Mr Sanford said he was working with a number of national and Australasian companies keen to open in the new Rotorua developments, but he did not believe this was necessarily taking business away from the CBD.
"A lot would not have come to the CBD anyway, they were attracted to Rotorua because those developments met their specific requirements," he said. "I am dealing with two companies now who say they had five or six towns they would next develop in. If you can show them the property that will best fit them they will put you at the top of the list - it might be premises, size, location and specific specification eg near a major grocery chain."
He said the new companies, some of which hoped to be trading by Christmas, would create new jobs and generate spending that would not have happened otherwise.
