D'you buy?

One Salient Oversight has posted a brief item (with a link that's well worth a look) about wasted resources in Dubai's development. This was originally going to be a comment on OSO's blog but then it started to grow beyond comment size so I thought I'd post this on my own blog.

I was in Dubai for a few days in March this year and a lot of the things in that link ring true with my experience. I was travelling from Europe to Australia and since my flight was with Emirates, instead of just changing planes at Dubai and immediately flying on to Australia I decided to make use of the possibility for a free stopover and see Dubai. (Well it was "free" in the sense that the airline didn't charge me any more for it -- of course I had to pay for things in Dubai such as accommodation, food and ground transport.) My own conclusion was that while Dubai is an interesting place as a stopover destination it's not the kind of place I would go to as a travel destination in its own right. If (like I was) you are flying from A to B via Dubai and a stopover in Dubai won't add to the cost of your flight and you have a few days to spare (and you are prepared to spend money on the ground in Dubai and put up with the combination of desert heat and congestion everywhere) then by all means check the place out. I have no regrets about visiting the place. But that's because I effectively had a free flight there and I had the time to spend a few days there. Had I had to fork out over $1000 on a flight to get there and back then I wouldn't be so sure. Given the cost of flying it's not really the kind of place I would want to spend my hard earned money travelling to. But everyone's different. Your tastes in a tourist destination may be completely different from mine: De gustibus non est diputandum. And Dubai is also not really the kind of place I'd visit twice.

A number of things really struck me about Dubai of which I'll talk about three here. One was the imbalance (in numbers and in lifestyle) between the locals and expats; a second was the emphasis on the high-end luxury market and tying Dubai's prosperity to the world economy; and a third was the audacity of the development going on there, with an awful lot of waste.

First, the imbalance between locals and expats. Foreigners outnumber locals to such an extent that once you leave the airport (where the customs officials are Emiratis), apart from the odd policeman (and invariably it's a man) you may run into on the street (I came across one in four days!) you'd be hard pressed to see any locals. The place is full of foreign workers (Gastarbeiter?), the majority of whom come from "South Asia" (i.e. the Indian subcontinet and Sri Lanka) with a good dose from other Asian countries as well (eg the Phillipines, Indonesia). Of course before I went there my idea of "expats" was one of white collar workers (from many different countries -- including my own Australia) earning good money and paying no income tax (Dubai doesn't have any). And while there is this kind of expat in Dubai, they make up a very small proportion of the population. The majority of the population are expats working at the "lower end" of the economy, in construction, as domestic servants, in the service industry in general. living a life of relative hardship (although probably earning more than they would at home which is no doubt why they're in Dubai to start with). The local Emiratis on the other hand live a life of relative luxury and are rarely to be seen on the street. For the most part they live in luxury villas (air-conditioned of course) and drive air-conditioned luxury cars (or are chauffeur driven) to get from their air-conditioned luxury villas to their air-conditioned workplaces or to the air-conditioned shopping centre. As a tourist you will see very few local Emiratis.

I don't know enough about the other Emirates which comprise the UAE but I have heard that Dubai is the most "liberal" and I suspect that if you went to others you may see more locals and fewer expats. When I visit a place, I like to get a feel for the local culture. Yes I'm aware of the fact that I'm a tourist and that I'll always be an outsider, and no I don't look down on people who choose to go to closed resorts such as Club Med where there is no interaction with the outside world, but that's not me. If I go to the UAE I like to see Emiratis and experience Emirati culture and I didn't get that feeling in Dubai. Of course all the expats in Dubai contribute to the culture of the place in their own unique way and I had some wonderful Indian food as well as some very interesting conversations with Indian, Indonesian and Filipino residents of Dubai about what it's like for them to live there.

At the end of it all I was left concluding that somewhat paradoxically the expats are the real Dubai and the local Emiratis are living a fantasy.

Second, the emphasis on the high-end luxury market and tying Dubai's properity to the world economy. I'm a student and I don't have a lot of money for travel, let alone staying in five star resorts. I'm currently doing postgraduate study overseas and was travelling home to Australia to see my family and happened to get a cheap flight with Emirates and hve a few days in Dubai on my way home. When I travel I have to be quite frugal. I tend to stay in youth hostels or backpacker accomodation rather than in hotels. Well, Dubai is not exactly a backpacker's paradise. The whole place is built for the luxury end of the market. I stayed in Dubai's one and only youth hostel (which is YHA affiliated) which is not that centrally located (although it could have been worse) which meant I got to know the Dubai bus network quite well and after a few days was giving other tourists plenty of advice about the buses! But my point is not really about the scarcity of backpacker accommodation but Dubai's whole strategy of aiming at the top end of the market. Apart from the lack of backpacker accommodation there are very few lower end hotels (eg 2 and 3 star) in Dubai. Dubai is marketing itself as a five star tourist destination rather than as a tourist destination with 2, 3, 4 and 5 star hotels for you to choose from. Obviously Dubai is trying to attract a certain kind of tourist -- which is fair enough -- but you've got to wonder whether such a strategy will actually work in the long term. I mean, there just aren't that many millionaires in the world, and of the millionaires, why would they want to come to Dubai in favour of other destinations? And what really struck me is that they are building more and more of these luxury hotels. Dubai is one massive construction site with luxury hotel after luxury hotel going up. I don't think that all this extra tourist accommodation is a response to demand or even sensibly forecast demand. Rather, the place is awash with money and people are optimistically building things in the hope that it will generate demand. I think these people are going to be in for a rude awakening. Where are all the tourists going to come from? Blowed if I know. There's virtually no domestic tourist market to speak of. Dubai is in the desert with very little in terms of the natural environment to attract people to the place and what it lacks for in its natural geography as a draw card it's trying to make up for with construction work. They are building beach resorts, golf courses, theme parks, sporting venues and even (indoor) ski slopes in the desert. But none of this is (primarily) for the domestic market. Dubai is doing this in an effort to attract wealthy foreign tourists. But again I ask where are they going to come from? Around Dubai are the other Emirates of the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Of course there are some very wealthy people in these countries and the chance to play golf or go skiing in Dubai offers something different from home. But the majority of these people live quite modestly (if not in poverty) and would not be travelling to a five star tourist destination any time soon. So Dubai would realistically have to rely on wealthy tourists from further afield flying in. But I just don't see what Dubai has that will attract many of these people. Obviously Dubai is trying very hard by building things you would not normally find in the desert in order to attract people. But I just don't see it working. If I were a wealthy European or North American why would I want to go to Dubai to go to a beach resort or to play golf or go skiing (indoors) when there are plenty of other places closer to home (and with much more bearable climates) I can do it? Of course maybe Dubai is banking on all the millionaires in India (and perhaps China) for its continued prosperity. So maybe there is some method to the madness after all. But I seriously doubt it. As soon as the word economy slows down a bit or the peak oil problem becomes a reality then Dubai is going to become one massive white elephant.

Third, the audacity of the development going on there, with an awful lot of waste. It's not just that Dubai is a massive construction site. It's what they're building. Building housing and hotels is not a bad thing. Nor is building leisure facilities. But so much of what's going on in Dubai is just wasteful, both in terms of quantity and quality. In terms of quantity: there is already an oversupply of luxury hotel accommodation and yet they are still building more. And in terms of quality: they are spending billions on projects that don't meet any real need; this is the case with building taller and taller buildings just for the sake of being able to boast about having the tallest building in the world, or spending billions in changing the natural environment for no real need in projects such as the Palm Islands or the World Islands.

Look, I'm by no means anti-development. But I reckon that about 95% of the stuff they are building in Dubai is just excessive. They are devoting all this money to building new luxury hotels when they haven't got the guests to fill them and when there is a real shortage of affordable housing for the expat workers. Some of the construction (like the subway system -- traffic congestion in Dubai would have to be among the worst in the world) is long overdue; other stuff (like the airport expansion or new housing) is sensible planning for the future. But much of it is wasteful or wishful thinking.