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By Matthew Tostevin
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An uncertain ceasefire was just taking hold between Iran and Israel. The map of the Middle East still bore a blaze of red travel warnings.
But Dubai's tourist promotion chief was as upbeat as ever about the prospects of attracting millions more visitors—and potential residents—to a city that has emerged from being a stable travel and investment hub in a turbulent region to become an increasing destination for travelers in its own right. "We know that some markets will be impacted by the news that travels to them and the headlines that they might see if they're not very familiar with the region," Issam Abdulrahim Kazim, CEO of Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing, told Newsweek. "So what we do is we're constantly looking at the globe."
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"At any time that we see a slowdown in or potential slowdown for some markets, we can quickly switch our focus onto other potential opportunities and continue our overall growth," he said during an interview in the city.
Growing Ambitions
There's a good chance you will have seen an advertisement seeking to tempt you to spend time in Dubai with whatever is most likely to appeal to you. That targeting is by design as the city—now easily the biggest in the United Arab Emirates—seeks ever more growth, in line with a plan to double the size of its economy between 2023 and 2033.
Dubai is already within the top 10 of the world's most visited cities, with 18.72 million visitors last year.
"We want to increase length of stay, increase spend, the economic impact on the GDP and increase repeat visitation," Kazim said, rattling off figures and projections at speed.
"We want to make sure that if someone has not considered Dubai yet, we tempt them enough through our campaigns, through our messaging, whether it's overall awareness or with our partners, to at least get them to transit Dubai, even if it's a few hours—they can leave the airport, enjoy what the city has to offer and hopefully go back feeling like they didn't spend enough time. And they should revisit."
Dubai's status as a travel hub was a big factor in its rapid growth. It has the world's busiest airport for international travel and recorded traffic of 92.3 million people last year (only Atlanta's airport was busier overall). But Kazim seeks to shift the idea that it is a stopover between Europe or the Americas and Asia. Top target markets for visitors have shifted from Saudi Arabia, Britain and India to a broader global market including Europe, Asia, Central Asia and the Americas. A third of the world's population is within a four-hour flight and two-thirds within eight hours, Kazim said.
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"Don't get me wrong, we still capitalize on transit and stopover whenever possible, but it's become a lot more of a destination of choice and a repeat destination of choice," he said. As a city visit for shopping and entertainment it is marketed as a competitor to London, Paris or New York. As a beach destination, it competes with places like Thailand or the Maldives during the Northern Hemisphere winter.
The goal is to show it off as much more than a new collection of spotless malls and gleaming skyscrapers exemplified by the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, jutting as a secular minaret from the high-end stores beneath. Summer can also be a challenge, with average daytime temperatures of over 100 degrees and few venturing from the air-conditioning.
"You need to market to every individual person traveling in a group, whether it's a family or friends," Kazim said. "Some people might want the city in retail, others might want the beach. Some people might want the great gastronomy experiences, and other people want to make sure that wherever they go, it's a safe and secure place."
Security Conscious
Dubai was ranked as the second safest city in the world again recently by Numbeo—behind Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital around an hour's drive away. Dubai is used to capitalizing on its emphasis on safety and security, particularly in a wider Middle Eastern region where those are often in short supply.
As a city, Dubai has doubled in population in less than 15 years to around four million people—though that's still less than half of New York's five boroughs. Some 90 percent of Dubai's residents are from some 200 nationalities.
On one side, the city expands into the desert, with occasional patches of sand and rock in newer suburbs a reminder of what it all was until recently. On the other, land reclamation is pushing Dubai into the sea. Its rising number of visitors and residents puts pressure on infrastructure, but Kazim said that was being addressed by a city that considers itself a product and is run like a private startup, where decisions can be made quickly—be that adding more roads or the new metro line and airport that are on the way.
"Whenever we need something to happen, it's literally one phone call and everyone is around that conference table," he said, also highlighting a readiness to quickly identify incentives for target visitors, such as a decision to expand middle-market tourism with tax breaks for hoteliers when that was the priority, and a drive to make Dubai visa-free for more nationalities.
The mission to market Dubai also treats it as a product in a similar way to fast-moving consumer goods, Kazim said. Celebrities are a core part, with Jessica Alba and Zac Efron starring in a thriller-style advert to publicize the city. Gwyneth Paltrow, Zoe Saldana and Kate Hudson had helped highlight Dubai as a friendly destination for women travelers, Kazim said.
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Meanwhile, Bollywood actor and producer Shah Rukh Khan and Indian cricketer Virat Kohli also underlined Dubai's appeal in the world's most populous country. "We've worked with Millie Bobby Brown, so obviously being very famous right now, especially with a certain age group...[we were] capitalizing on her fame...and her just getting married to Jon Bon Jovi's son, Jake," he said. "So they were here, as I would say, as a continuation of their honeymoon. And then we capitalized on that as well, and we created a campaign behind that which really resonated within the target segments and audiences as well."
One of Dubai's latest tactics, however, draws on its foreign residents rather than Hollywood. "So we found families, let's say from New York, from LA, from Miami," he said. "We did a...campaign on this [family] from New York, what they do, what they enjoy. And then we pushed it only in New York. And then...we make sure that you can then find these characters, whether it's on Instagram, and so you can actually dig deeper, find out what they do in the day-to-day life in Dubai, and we really wanted to leverage this multicultural aspect that we have of Dubai."
Because ultimately the goal is not only to get more people to visit Dubai, but to get more people to move there. That in turn drives more visits by friends and relatives who may then themselves decide to move to the low-tax, high security environment.
Celebrating Individuals
The plan seems to be working. "When people come to Dubai, visit for the first time, come back, repeat visit enough times, a lot of times it's either the husband or the wife will be like: 'But why don't we just move here? The kids love it. They enjoy it. It's safe and secure.' They see that Dubai is a no-brainer," Kazim said.
"It's the one place in the world where even though you have this multicultural aspect...you still maintain your individual identity. You celebrate your background, your culture, and you celebrate it together. So the kids are genuinely learning about Christmas, about Eid, about Diwali, about Chinese New Year and so on. And I think that is something that today is becoming more and more rare."
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