Sheik Mohammed has drawn global attention for his head-spinning projects.
A desert fantasy takes shape
By SETH SHERWOOD
A passionate admirer and composer of Arabic poetry the
“Money is like water ” he told the crowd of assembled journalists and investors. “If you lock it up it becomes stagnant and foul-smelling but if you let it flow it stays fresh.”
It was an apt turn of phrase for a man who has rained down such staggering sums to cultivate tourism in his parched Middle Eastern hinterland along the Persian Gulf ? and who has artfully persuaded foreigners to do likewise. Where 10 years ago there was only a sparsely developed desert coastline there is now a multibillion-dollar buffet of never-seen-before tourist attractions rising from the sea and sand including a rotating indoor ski mountain an underwater luxury hotel what will be the world's largest shopping mall and what will be the world's tallest building. They will shoot up alongside established icons like the “seven-star” Burj Al-Arab hotel and the Palms a trio of palm-tree-shaped artificial islands the first of which will open in January 2007.
The 57-year-old British-educated ruler ? who became Dubai's leader upon the death of his older brother in January but has long been credited as the mastermind of the country's development ? last year managed to attract more than six million travelers to a flat hot unforgiving landscape thousands of miles from the world's cultural capitals. And there is no sign that he intends to slow down.
But the big-league makeover isn't simply a powerful billionaire's vanity project. With his late father and brothers Sheik Mohammed realized years ago that
In 1985 Sheik Mohammed personally started Emirates Airlines with $10 million and two planes. The airline has been profitable every year since 1986 and now operates about 100 planes serving more than 80 destinations around the world. A decade later he introduced the annual Dubai Shopping Festival. The monthlong event ? basically a citywide sale with some extravagant raffles ? now draws some three million attendees every winter and earns
Oil which made up about half the country's revenues two decades ago now accounts for about 5 percent. The gross domestic product has grown more than 400 percent in a little more than 10 years.
“He is definitely the most successful business case about how travel and tourism can transform a country ” said Jean-Claude Baumgarten president of the London-based World Travel and Tourism Council. “I don't know any better example in the world.”
But it's the head-spinning and often record-setting tourism innovations that have brought
A taxi ride away a gargantuan falcon-shaped patch of land ? to be called Falcon City of Wonders ? will boast large-scale replicas of the
Inspired by
Still Sheik Mohammed has proved a canny problem-solver so far.
“Great men rise to great challenges ” reads one of his poems. In true
Source: The New York Times 10 December 2006 http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/travel/10entrepreneur.html
Photo: Tim Graham Picture Library/Getty Images