Designed to resemble a billowing sail, the Burj Al Arab is the world’s tallest hotel

The emirate that has most successfully captured international attention is Dubai – and it is easy to see why. When it comes to innovative and ambitious development projects, Dubai has demonstrated an extraordinary knack for grabbing the headlines.
The world’s tallest and only 7-star hotel? That’s the Burj Al Arab, soaring to a height of more than 1,000 feet. The world’s tallest freestanding structure? That’s the Burj Dubai, which will be the tallest building in the world on completion in 2009.The largest airport will be Dubai World Central International, with an annual cargo capacity of 12 million tons and a passenger capacity of more than 120 million. The largest shopping space will be the Dubai Mall, also under construction, a shopping colossus larger than 50 international soccer pitches. The largest waterfront development will be Dubai Waterfront project, which extends over an area of 31 square miles.

And so the list goes on. Dubailand will be the world’s largest theme park. The three islands of The Palm project will be the largest man-made islands – and be visible from the moon. Ski Dubai, where you can go skiing and tobogganing in the desert on real (manufactured) snow, is the world’s largest indoor snow park.

All these massive projects – and more – are the result of a highly successful strategy for economic development by an emirate that knows it cannot depend on oil for its future prosperity and has chosen to reinvent itself as a hub for business and tourism. Over the past decade, the emirate has been highly successful in building world-class infrastructure and services.

Boosted by Dubai’s pioneering decision to permit ownership of freehold property by citizens of other countries, the real estate and construction sectors have enjoyed a sustained boom. Estimates put the value of real estate under construction in the emirate last year at £22 billion, with an equal amount at the development stage.

The previously mentioned Burj Dubai will be the centrepiece of a 500-acre, £3.9 billion Downtown Dubai development that is intended to offer a dynamic urban lifestyle to rival that of New York and Los Angeles in the US, the Left Bank in Paris, and the harbour areas in Hong Kong and Sydney.

The gold-rush days may now be over, but rents and prices are still rising steadily, even though the frenetic buying has slowed. Last year real estate transactions reached a new high of £8.7 billion, an increase of 88 per cent on 2005, and the signs are that for the foreseeable future demand will exceed supply. Dubai’s population is forecast to almost double to more than 2 million people by 2010, and to reach 4 million by 2017, creating a huge requirement for new accommodation.

The well-diversified economy continues to expand at a rapid rate. Nominal GDP growth last year was an impressive 23 per cent. Dubai now accounts for around 43 per cent of the UAE’s total non-oil GDP and 28 per cent of its entire GDP. Dubai’s free zones have made a major contribution to this growth and diversification. The emirate’s strategic location and excellent infrastructure makes it an ideal distribution and commercial hub for the region.

The latest economic plan, launched by Dubai’s ruler, and Prime Minister of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, aims to achieve economic growth of 11 per cent a year and to almost triple gross domestic product to £53 billion by 2015. The workforce will need to almost double to sustain the pace of growth.

Sheikh Zayed Road, named after the UAE’s first president

The plan focuses on developing the emirate as a business and services centre. “We will focus on the strong sectors in our economy including tourism, trade, transportation and financial services,” explains Sheikh Mohammed. The contribution to GDP made by financial services will increase fourfold to £7.4 billion from the current £1.7 billion.

Dubai has firmly established itself as the UAE’s tourism hub. In 1996, the emirate welcomed 1.9 million visitors. Last year, it received more than 6.5 million, generating revenues in excess of £1.5 billion. The contribution made by tourism to the emirate’s GDP has risen to around 30 per cent. Passenger numbers at Dubai International Airport have been rising by at least 15 per cent each year since 2000; in 2006, 28.8 million people passed through it. More than 687,000 of Dubai’s visitors in 2006 arrived from the UK, the emirate’s largest source of arrivals since 2003, constituting 10 per cent of the market.

The 82 per cent occupancy rate registered by the local hotels was exceeded only by London and New York. There are currently more than 400 hotels – 100 have opened since 1996. By 2010, the emirate aims to attract 15 million tourists annually, to have 80,000 hotel rooms compared to the current 39,000, and to more than triple the number of people employed by the industry to 100,000.

A major draw will be Dubailand, an entertainment, leisure and retail complex of mind-boggling scale, twice the size of Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, that expects to cater for a population of 2.5 million tourists, workers and residents, once fully operational. Its attractions will range from theme parks, to culture and art, science and planetariums, sports and sports academies, wellbeing and health facilities, shopping, resorts and hotels.