Is The Desert Alive? by Till Bartels

Is the desert alive?

The emirate attracts sun and luxury seekers. But if it wants to remain an attractive travel destination, it must rethink its strategy. By Till Bartels

A woman's voice addresses in English and Arabic the people waiting in the elevator: “Welcome aboard on the way to the space station Hope." The doors close, and the virtual space shuttle lifts off to a deafening noise. Skyline and desert pass by on the side windows, the Palm Jumeirah and Jebel Ali are visible on the floor, hundreds of wind turbines rotate in the ocean along the coastline before the starry sky appears through the skylight. Two minutes later, the cabin docks a space station in the year 2071 and the visitors exit into the topmost exhibition area of the Museum of the Future (MOTF).

Dubai has staged its future, which will be 600 kilometres above the earth. The space station is named after Hope, the real space probe of the United Arab Emirates, which reached Mars' orbit in February 2021.

Dubai is also aiming high above in the tourism industry. “By 2025, we want to be the number one among the world's cities for vacations, business trips and events”, says Issam Kazim , the CEO of Dubai's Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing. Before the pandemic, Dubai with its over 16 million visitors in 2019 was ranked number four in a global comparison - behind Bangkok, London and Paris.

For about three decades, the Emirate's strategy has been to move away from oil and towards more free trade, financial services, real estate projects and tourism. To achieve this, Dubai is focusing not only on pure growth, but on higher quality in tourism.

As a central component of the new strategy, which aims to fulfil not only the need for luxury, beach and shopping, is the MOTF, which opened at the beginning of the year. After superlatives, such as the luxury hotel Burj al Arab, the 828-meter Burj Khalifa and an indoor ski slope in the desert that is no longer compatible with sustainability, the building, commissioned by the government prefers to focus on content-related concepts instead of gigantomania.

The idea of the hole

"I wanted to create a building with a futuristic look and a dynamic movement, almost like a spacecraft”, says Shaun Killa, who won the competition for the museum. His idea: Pack the cultural facility into a torus, a horizontal lying oval with a hole in the middle. A donut made of steel. The South African architect, who has been living in Dubai since 1998, is standing in his office on the 31st floor of a skyscraper, within sight of the museum. Next to him is a coffee table with a stack of white Lego bricks. In his hands, he is holding a cut-open model of the museum and explains the challenges of the project.

A small plot of land was available on Sheikh Zayed Road, "the spine of the city" as Shaun Killa explains, between the metro line on stilts and the Jumeirah Emirates Towers. Next to the 15-lane arterial road, the building is clearly visible to everyone. But the tracks twelve meters above the ground would have visually cut through the building. To prevent this Killa created a green hill as a pedestal, that towers four meters over the metro and which houses the parking garage, lobby and auditorium.

Unlike museums, which tend to cover a large surface, the MOFT extends 78 meters into the vertical. “My first drawing of the building was made shortly after midnight in five minutes”, says the architect and points to the framed sketch on the wall. In the draft, the building already has a hole in the middle, "a void that stands for the unknown and for the future”. The fa?ade is covered in Arabic characters. “I wanted to make the culture of the Orient visible through the ancient art form of calligraphy.” The curved characters also serve as windows and are framed by LED strips that light up in the evening.

One of the four exhibition levels, the "al -Waha” challenges the senses: from touching to acoustic to a soft dance floor that yields with every step - a pleasure for children, for adults rather an irritation. “We want visitors to have new experiences here," says Brendan McGetrick, the museum's creative director. The 44-year-old American has designed the rooms as a journey from outer space to oneself, that's the idea.

On the second floor of the museum, the "Tomorrow Today" section shows a somewhat more concrete future in the areas of transportation, energy, water and food. A film clip aims to provide answers to the question of how the growing world population can be fed.

Also thanks to its architecture, the MOTF has quickly become a visitor magnet. Most of the daily 2,800 daily visitors are tourists from abroad. The museum makers have thus succeeded in achieving what Expo 2020 had set itself as its goal. The world exhibition, which had to be postponed from October 2021 to March 2022 because of Covid, wanted to attract guests from far away, but fell short of expectations. Of the anticipated 25 million visitors, 70 percent were expected to be from abroad. Today, the organizers are talking about 24 million visits instead of visitors. Of these, most were locals with a season ticket. The emirates had even given their state employees six days of special vacation time, so that the Expo would be a success.

The change takes time

Since the beginning of October, the site has opened its doors again. Only four of the themed pavilions can be visited, such as those on sustainability and mobility. Under the covered walkways, the heat builds up and Expo music and birdcalls resound from the loudspeakers. Where the German pavilion once stood is now empty; it has been dismantled. It is not until the evening light show on the al-Wasl Plaza, that the rows of seats fill up.

The Expo site was planned as a new city district in which companies and apartments were to be built. The transformation is not yet complete. “People have an emotional connection to the area through their visits to the exhibition”, says Ahmad al-Chatib of the Expo City Dubai Organisation. A pedestrian- friendly city without cars, a first in Dubai, is to be built here. Before that, however, the Expo City will host the next UN Climate Change Conference in November 2023.

Because the emirate contained the pandemic at an early stage and the population is thoroughly vaccinated, tourism has recovered more quickly than elsewhere: Dubai reported 7.1 million overnight visitors in the first six months of 2022, an increase of 183 percent in comparison to the previous year. The occupancy rate of the 770 hotels is reported at 74 percent, which is almost at pre-crisis levels.

The average length of stay has also increased to four days. A business trip is often combined with a vacation in Dubai. What remains is the image as an expensive destination full of luxury hotels. To counteract this, the emirate has now created more inexpensive accommodations. For those who invest in a three- or four-star property, the municipal taxes are waived for five years.

The quality offensive also includes gastronomy. The latest edition of the "Michelin Guide” lists 69 restaurants in Dubai, eleven of which have one or two stars. The ingredients are increasingly coming, albeit at a low level, from within the country. Whereas the emirate used to import 90 percent of its food, it now imports 80 percent. The world's largest hydroponic farm Bustanica has been producing up to three tons of food per day since July. In a windowless hall 70 kilometres from the city, arugula, spinach and lettuce are grown and soon will be joined by herbs and tomatoes.

The advantages of growing without soil: by circulating the water in a closed circuit, its consumption is reduced by 95 percent. Harvesting takes place all year round, no pesticides or herbicides are used. One day after harvesting, the produce is delivered to the customers, such as wholesalers, hotels, restaurants and airline kitchens.

What needs to change

Back in the center, where the emirate began. In the Al-Fahidi neighbourhood near the mouth of Dubai Creek, there is a museum village. A traditional clay building houses the Crossroad of Civilizations Museum. It documents Dubai's central position as a place where centuries-old trade routes cross, as the intersection of different cultures and religions.

In addition to Islam and Christianity several rooms are dedicated to Judaism. In May 2021, "We Remember" was opened, the first permanent exhibition on the Holocaust on the Arabian Peninsula. It is seen as a sign of détente between the United Arab Emirates and Israel. In the courtyard of the museum is a sukkah. The shelter made of branches and leaves is erected every year for the seven-day Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. From the neighbourhood the calls of the muezzin come over for prayer.

Here, at the latest, the visitor gets the idea: The future of tourism in Dubai and other desert states does not lie in further senseless showcase projects (such as the World Cup in the emirate of injustice Qatar), but in other values such as the plurality of religions and opinions, more rights for women, acceptance of minorities and also better conditions for those who are brought in so that they can build the future, the migrant workers. Only through more tolerance and liberality can Dubai become a vacation destination that one can visit without concerns.