The class has made it to Dubai. Hooray! If I ever visit again, I want a luxury flying experience. The day spent on travel to arrive here for me was not fabulous. On the first leg, I got ill and the second flight I was situated in between a teenager who thought my seat was his arm and leg room and a family with three children under the age of five.
The hotel so far has been excellent. There are some curious differences, but that is what makes this type of travel fun, and all the staff have been super helpful.
In my first entry I mentioned that I was looking forward to our visit to the Bastakiya area and I just wanted to recap that my favorite part of that visit was the bamboo home in the yard of the Dubai Museum. Our guide, Mozhgan, explained how they would wet down the fabric vents in the towers to help cool down the home. I was disappointed in the souk shopping. I thought it would be more local goods and I found the vendors were really aggressive with trying to sell their products. All of this increases my knowledge-base in regards to the local culture. The souks I now view as only a tourist area that locals don’t patronize.
The next educational experience that I am looking forward to is the Dubai Tourism and Commerce Marketing presentation. How did Dubai,in the last forty years, go from a little known desert community to a metropolis of luxury and one of the top five world travel destinations. As an example of what I hope to find out: Was it only the Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan’s vision that lead the UAE to become a tourist mega attraction? Did they always dream of the massive number of visitors and plan their infrastructure from the beginning to support it? Why do they feel they are so successful in drawing the tourist dollars to Dubai? Is it only because the government was able to leverage their oil profits into funding of such necessary projects such as reclaiming land to build such projects as the Palm Island. How does the DTCM expect to hold the market and increase share now that they are so saturated?
I would love to be able to take a small part of their ideas and be able to incorporate them into helping expand our market attraction at work. While I am in a position of event management, I still need to be able to connect to my customer base and provide them an experience to remember — and here in Dubai, they are not only succeeding in this but exceeding.
Later that same day we went to ski! I am way too uncoordinated to actually ski, but the class will have a chance to visit the Ski Dubai indoor slope and snow park at the Mall of the Emirates. It is unfathomably that I have never seen snow. I guess since I am a Florida baby, I find it a little intimidating. While I primarily serve a Caribbean market, you can never tell where life will take you. So maybe this introduction will serve to inspire me to try another cold, wet…no I mean wonderful white Christmas vacation. I am sure it will be a time to remember. The penguin encounter or snowball making is about my skill level and speed. (Not Buddy the Elf speed though.)
Come back to find out if I fell flat trying this new experience. I will follow up on how my experiences were met, surpassed or fell short for the Expo 2020, DTCM, and Ski Dubai discussed in the previous blogs. I will also discuss two new experiences L’altelier des Chefs of Dubai and the Desert Safari and Dinner Show.