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Visiting Dubai-land
I was asked to post a bit about my impressions of Dubai...so here is a posting on my visit. I wrote this on my way home, but other topics that were more time relevant came up so it sat for a while before I was able to publish it.
I spent a few days this week in Dubai, and came away impressed both with the frenetic level of activity as well as the challenges that they are facing. Dubai is growing from 2 to 6 million inhabitants over the next 4 years and they are building to accommodate the growth. In the Marina area where I was staying, there were about 20 towers, virtually every one under construction with a crane on top. When you are tripling your population, you have to build whole cities and that is what they are doing. In the end it all seemed a bit like visiting a huge amusement park during construction. An interesting comment is that arrivals to Dubai are currently limited by the availability of take-off slots from other airports into Dubai. They are focused on the Airbus 380 for seats/slot and are building an 8 runway airport, the largest in the world. From a business perspective, hospitality is king, with tens of thousands of hotel rooms under construction. Dubai and Las Vegas are definitely the leaders in the rate of expansion and luxury segments of the hospitality market.
The challenges with keeping up with this demand are obvious, the traffic can be horrendous and the continual construction means that the paths to anywhere change almost overnight. Also, while the finish level of things is luxury, the underlying infrastructure can be challenging. I could not get the Internet access in the room to work well enough to do SIP/VoIP, and I did not want to pay for cellular, so I tried my trusty 800 calling card. While I did get a connection, it was marred by occasional bursts of noise and fairly regular cross-talk linking to other conversations. Similarly, when looking under the construction, the work seemed to be less than world-class. In my hotel both the shower and the sliding door had issues.
Also, everything except gas is very expensive. Apparently the demand created by 40% annual population growth drives everything up in price...I was charged $8 for a bowl of white rice. On the other hand, gasoline is about $2 per gallon, and there are lots of new cars.
Another observation is that the vast majority of the population are guests, the local UAE citizens are far outweighed by the new arrivals. It will be interesting to see how this evolves as there are no current paths to UAE citizenship for the majority of the population.
I found it interesting that celebrities are getting into the boom; Boris Becker, Nicki Lauda, and Michael Shumacher have all lent their names to glitzy office towers. Links: Becker ..... Lauda. In a brand mad society, this seems to be the ultimate, having an office building named after a tennis player long retired and who has been eclipsed by a current Dubai resident; Roger Federer. I am wondering when there will be Technology Towers.....the Bob Metcalfe "Totally Connected Tower" would be a leading candidate in the new Silicon Oasis City (the technology zone).....or maybe the Bill Gates Tower, where every room has a mood/art screen and the outside is the shape of a PC.....
Finally, while I was there, the annual festival was on. When I asked what the festival celebrated; film, arts, music, culture........I was told that it was the Dubai Shopping Festival. In fact, shopping in Dubai seems to have moved from the hobby/obsession that it is in most of the world to a sport/staple of life. Virtually every conversation about Dubai, with co-workers, customers, partners and people I met included a comment that shopping was a "key" activity. In fact the three reasons given why Dubai was a destination for tourism were weather, beaches, and shopping. While I did not visit the current huge mall, I did drive by the wold's largest mall (under construction). I guess Dubai has better shopping than Hawaii, not sure about the weather and the beaches......
In the end I was glad my better half decided not to come....otherwise I might be writing this blog permanently from Dubai, extolling the values of great weather, long white beaches, great nightlife, an exploding economy, $2 gas and all that shopping.......in the end I am returning to good old "normal" California.
