Rome may not have been built in a day. For Dubai, on the other hand, the doubt remains... There's no need to rehash the legend of the pearl-fishing village transformed into a major port hub by the grace of Emir Rashid bin Said al-Makhtoum, then into the playful Babel of the Middle East by his son, Mohammed. A legend founded above all on daring, in a region where the smell of oil tends to foster a rentier mentality. "Money is like water: if you lock it up, it becomes stagnant and smells bad; but if you let it flow, it stays fresh", said the heir-builder in 2003 when presenting his Dubailand project, the huge leisure complex that will be under construction for some fifteen years and an investment of 10 billion dollars.
There's also no need to describe this city that reinvents itself every year, where skyscrapers sprout from the sand like mushrooms from moss, where desert traditions are frozen in an air-conditioning debauch, and where people don't hesitate to build palm trees on the water to make up for the pinginess of Nature, which has given the emirate only one coastline on the sea. Palm trees that symbolise to the world Dubai's "anything is possible" attitude, with the crowning glory now going to Palm Deira, an 80 square kilometre project due to open in successive phases from 2010. The most impressive project, perhaps, but not the only one in the 'heavyweight' category, between the very next Burj Dubai tower and its 810 metres, the International Chess City and its 32 towers designed like chess pieces, or the Falcon City of Wonders where the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Wall of China and a replica of Central Park should soon rub shoulders.
More and more new hotels
Whether it's a temptation or a deterrent, Dubai is in any case a statistical success story whose glory is expressed first and foremost in figures. In 2006, more than 6 million visitors (more than India), 15 million expected by 2015 and an economic growth rate of more than 400 % over the last decade. The same goes for the hotel sector, which is booming: +33 % rooms over the period 2001-2005, while the occupancy rate rose from 61 to 85 % over the same period. And there's more to come. According to the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM), which manages the Emirate's tourism development, a further 1,8755 rooms will be added between now and 2010, with almost half of them announced for 2008 alone.
In Dubai, each hotel harvest generates its own vintage year. After the Park Hyatt Dubai in 2005 and the Kempinsky Mall of the Emirates Hotel in 2006, it was the Emirates Hotels and Resorts group that created the event in 2007 with the opening of its luxury flats at the Marina and Green Lakes. But the group does not have a monopoly on luxury, with no fewer than eleven five-star (!) establishments opening their doors in Dubai this year, including, on the French side, the Sofitel Jumeirah Beach Residence. And, of course, there's the new shower of stars (ten luxury establishments) that will descend on The Palm Jumeirah next year, with the Atlantis Resort at its heart, with its 1,539 rooms spread over a 42-hectare water park. These new establishments, like their predecessors, are expected to focus heavily on business customers. We generally estimate that business traffic accounts for almost 70 % of our visitors," points out Pascal Maigniez, DTCM Director for France and Benelux. The dual positioning of business and leisure is therefore one of the specific features of hotel projects in Dubai, where it is common for a beach hotel to house a convention centre." But a close look at the calendar of inaugurations suggests that the novelty is not limited to the hotel sector, with the six new golf courses designed by Greg Norman, the new metro, the future tramway and, above all, the countless malls, leisure parks and luxury residential areas that are preparing to fill the remaining empty spaces.
It's probably the airport that's the most impressive: in parallel with the expansion work on Dubai's main airport, which should enable it to accommodate the "70 million passengers expected in 2016", the Dubai World Central project is being developed to the south of the city, which is presented as "the world's largest airport (...) with a capacity equal to that of Chicago's O'Hare and London's Heathrow airports combined", i.e. 120 million annual passengers. In short, the Emirate star is not about to be introduced to the charms of minimalism.
