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| Mid-80s travel poster for Dubai |
All over Linkedin, and I mean all over Linkedin, the same chorus appears ad infinitum "Dubai is safe" some get more creative and go "I feel safe in Dubai". I am happy for them, because I am in Lebanon and no I do not feel safe. Also add to the cacophony sentences like "the state knows what it is doing" and "Reem Al Hashimy (UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation) has given a great interview to CNN" (the last one appears under different wording but the gist is the same).
No one talks about the conversative estimate of the 45 Billion Dollars in expected loss of revenue to the UAE from the war, because let's face it, someone in their right mind is not going to go to Dubai for vacation at this point. No matter how "safe" it is - and everyone and their mother is reminding us that it is so (check Linkedin, again).
Once the aura is broken, it cannot be restored. Do note, when the financial crisis happened in 2008, Dubai got hit incredibly hard, at one point I had a meeting with the owner of a magazine and asked why no one was covering the disaster, and he said "Tarek, there is an embargo, no one is to publish any bad articles about what is happening there, I know who is buttering my bread" - a week later he was in Dubai, met by a limousine at the airport as part of a charm offensive to open the new studios of a major news channel.
But now it is different, and yes, I know - skyscraper this, and museum of the future that, and 200-300 Millions spent yearly for the Louvre name for Abu Dhabi - for heaven's sake even Margiela has a real estate project there. I know many proclaim "life is the same", and I read that missiles or no missiles everyone is "being back to their hookah and food". Good for them.
In this case where are there so many repatriation flights and why are they over-booked and why is everyone clamoring to get their families out and every department of foreign affairs is advising its nationals not to travel to a lot of the countries in the region or to contact their embassies urgently to be able to arrange flights for them to go back home? Because perhaps "buttering one's bread" is no longer enough.
It is estimated that the region - which had a projected growth of 13% as of December 2025 - will lose an average of 30 million visitors, and the spend that comes with them. Saudi Arabia which was projected to be on a heavy growth path is slowing down beyond any logical estimations with flight cancellations happening acutely.
Will this have a halo effect for the future is still topic of debate. To misquote Shakespeare, "something is rotten in the state of" - no, not Denmark, but rather somewhere in the GCC. And no matter how many "Dubai is safe"s I see parroted on Linkedin, something does smell foul.