Dubai, tourism and diversification

In 1950 it had no hotels. Today is one of the destinations world's fastest growing market in international tourism. Dubai has a policy quite clear: to position itself as one of the favorite destinations for travelers from higher income. And a goal inwards: make the product less and less dependent on crude oil, which eventually will run out and get the bulk of income from other activities. Tourism is one of them.

In this first entry we will concentrate only on the part of hotels. Tomorrow, we will see another key Dubai: the theme of sports.

In 1990, Dubai had some seventy hotels, of which 25 could be considered five stars. By then, they had 600 thousand international visitors a year. Since then, began a strong impetus to the construction of luxury hotels. The best known is the Burj Al-Arab (the photo that is on this paragraph), the first seven-star hotel, which demanded an enormous investment thanks to the policy of maximum luxury. As argues Christopher Davidson (2008), the hotel still produces substantial losses. But it is primarily a marketing element of Dubai, and has achieved so much media attention that has served this objetivo.Para 2000, Dubai already had 3.4 million visitors a year and for 2007, 6.5 million . Most of them are housed in luxury hotels, which have improved occupancy rates that lower priced hotels. The policy of Dubai to promote such establishments has led to chain hotels such as Sheraton, Hilton and Le Meridien expand its operations there, as well as other Chinese and Indian networks.

Of course, similar influx of tourists and high occupancy of luxury hotels can not be sustained solely from a tourist beach, as it has in Dubai. There comes a key focus of the strategy of the emirate: sports, along with other initiatives linked to the development of shopping malls and art.