Marketing Dubai: Where are the Americans?

DUBAI CITY -- Dubai's era of superlatives commenced with the appearance of the luxurious, sail-shaped Burj Al Arab, the tallest hotel in the world when it opened in December 1999.

Seven years later, Dubai continues to target the uppermost position on every imaginable Top 10 list. It is erecting what will not only be the world's tallest building but one that is designed never to be surpassed: Additional stories can be added to the Burj Dubai, should plans for something higher be announced.

The superlatives are mounting. The emirate is home to the world's richest horse racing purse. The developers of a theme park, Dubailand, claim it will be twice the size of all existing Disney parks put together. The first Tiger Woods-designed golf course will be nearby. Dubai International Airport's duty-free shops currently tally only the second-highest sales receipts in the world, but the airport authority plans to remedy that, as well as other problems, when passenger capacity triples later this year.

Man-made islands shaped like palm trees and an artificial archipelago that resembles a map of the world are being created offshore. When all the projects along Dubai's coastline are complete, they will increase the length of Dubai's 40-mile natural shoreline by a factor of 41. A six-mile strip of theme hotels that intends to best Las Vegas' offerings has been mapped out; at night, giant illuminated 3-D billboards mark their sites along a road in an otherwise empty desert.

Just as the Burj Al Arab was happy to embrace a review that gave it seven stars out of a possible five, Dubai has welcomed the unofficial pronouncement that it is the eighth wonder of the world.

Before the era of superlatives began, there were no compelling reasons for foreigners to visit Dubai unless they were involved in shipping or related commerce (Dubai's port is the largest between Singapore and Rotterdam). If visitors at that time employed hyperbole to describe the place, they were likely talking about the weather in summer, when temperatures hover near 115 degrees and humidity is dependably above 90%.

The audacity and marketing genius of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, changed all that.

Sheikh Mohammed had a strong motivation to carve out a special niche for Dubai. It is a common misbelief that Dubai's current development spree is fueled by, and supplemental to, oil revenue. While it's true that the U.A.E. holds 9.5% of the world's proven oil reserves, Dubai's neighboring emirate, Abu Dhabi, controls 92% of that pool. Petrodollars account for only about 3% of Dubai's gross domestic product, and it's estimated that the wells will be dry in 15 to 20 years.

Sheik Mohammad is credited with conceptualizing Dubai as an extraordinary tourist destination within his grander design to make it the most important city between Europe and points east in Asia. It becomes clear, when speaking with corporate executives and government officials, that public and private sectors alike are encouraged to work cooperatively toward the common goal of elevating Dubai's brand value.

"In most countries, companies operate in silos and bicker," said Bill Walshe, who holds the title of chief marketing and business innovation officer of Jumeirah Group, the hotel-development arm of government-owned Dubai Holdings. "But here, we're like the musketeers: all for one and one for all. We get together and try to find the place where we all can get something out of a project. But the one that gets the most is 'destination Dubai.' "

In conceiving Dubai as a center of tourism, Sheik Mohammed was not deterred by its paucity of tourism's elemental components: physical beauty, cultural attractions, striking coastline or fabulous shopping. He apparently learned how to think outside the box ­­ and think big -- at the knee of his father, Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum. Sheikh Rashid created modern Dubai when he built a large, state-of-the-art port facility in an emirate then known primarily as a transshipment point for dhows, the small, rickety wooden vessels that can still be seen loading tax-free goods along the "Creek" of central Dubai and heading out each evening to the Arabian Gulf, en route to markets ranging from Iran and Sri Lanka to Mombasa, Kenya.

To compete for global market share in tourism, Sheik Mohammed, like his father before him, built supply in order to create demand. And in doing so, he has transformed Dubai, once a backwater sitting on the fringes of a region associated with political instability, into a destination so fascinating that people fly from around the world simply to see and experience it.

Where are the Americans?

If this something-from-nothing tale sounds a little like Las Vegas' story, or even Orlando's, there's one notable difference: In Dubai, Americans are conspicuous only by their absence.

This is particularly surprising because Dubai's culture of materialism-on-display, outsized -- outlandish, even -- ambition, exuberant optimism and flamboyant architecture feels at times to be an exaggerated reflection of American ethos.

It begs the question: How important is the American market to Dubai?

Khalid A bin Sulayem, director general of the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing, is the de facto minister of tourism in Dubai, and he has guided tourism development since 1993, steadily raising its contribution to Dubai's economy to 20% of its GDP. He readily conceded that America is not currently a major feeder market. Other Gulf states, the British and Germans, and even Japan, outpace the U.S. when it comes to inbound traffic.

"America is a big market, so even a small share is good," he added brightly. "But we have to prioritize our marketing efforts."

Of the 9 million visitors to Dubai last year, a little more than 350,000 were Americans, up 40% from 2005, he said. He credits the three direct flights daily from New York on Emirates Airlines for having played a significant role in increasing traffic, but he adds that "our first priority for the U.S. is commerce. As regards U.S. travelers, we're concentrating on the MICE [meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions] markets for the most part.

"Those people have a reason to come," he said. "The leisure traveler? No way."

But why not? With its 40 shopping malls, fabulous hotels, high-tech water park, indoor ski slope and gracious people, there's plenty to attract leisure travelers of any nationality. Dubai is even family-friendly. In February, the Madinat Jumeirah hotel complex and Jumeirah Beach Hotel were filled with British schoolchildren on their midterm break.

To get to the heart of the matter of why American leisure travelers are not a priority, Sulayem fired up his laptop and said he wanted to show me something he had downloaded from YouTube. With a few clicks, he launched a video from a fake news program in which an Australian comedian, a la Jay Leno, does man-on-the-street interviews with Americans in order to reveal their geographic and political ignorance. (In answer to the question "Can you name a country that begins with the letter 'U'?," none of the dozen or so respondents were able to come up with any answer, let alone United States of America.)

"Americans don't know anything about Dubai," Sulayem said, putting away the laptop. "We work well with the big players in the U.S. We're reaching out to travel agents, conference organizers and cruise lines. But the U.S. is a challenge. We cannot deny that. And we have to adjust our criteria for each market or we'll be wasting our money."

Among the factors that bring the U.S. down on the priority list is distance ("The U.S. is becoming more important, but we understand how far away it is") and the knowledge that Dubai's location in the Middle East is going to spook a lot of Americans ("Though we're obviously nowhere near the trouble areas, what's happening here in the region definitely doesn't help").

But it's also clear that Sulayem isn't losing sleep over Dubai's relatively modest share of U.S. travelers. "You can't get a room here," he said with a smile. "We have the highest occupancy in the world, with very high room rates."

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