Reading Wallpaper’s brief article, it’s obvious – for what it’s worth – that they’ve never been to Wadi Rum. Unlike similar desert tourism hubs in, say, Oman or the UAE, Wadi Rum has no “five-star camps”. Staying there is a basic affair, either in vast, ramshackle tourist camps sleeping 150 people in army-style two-man canvas tents, pitched in orderly rows a few hundred metres off the road – or with bedouin guides in their own smaller, cosier camps in the deep desert, sporting rudimentary washing facilities and blankets under the stars. There is no “mixing [of] luxury travel with tribal customs”. The former doesn’t exist; the latter are homogenised and packaged for outsider consumption so as to be more or less indiscernible.

For years, since British climbers Di Taylor and Tony Howard introduced low-impact tourism to Wadi Rum after 1984, the bedouin and the Jordanian authorities have tussled over how to develop the area while maintaining its cultural and environmental integrity.

Now, perhaps, this scheme points a new way forward. Have a look at Wallpaper’s slideshow of images. All very striking. Especially this one – your private infinity pool.

It would be easy to decry the whole idea. A pool in the desert?! The global elite landing helicopters in Rum to spend a week being massaged and waited on hand & foot by Egyptian and Filipino lackeys?! Hacking huge chunks out of Rum’s epic mountainscape in order to accommodate “pure concrete forms” and “sheets of glass and water”?!

But I’m not going to decry it. I’m going to welcome it, with reservations. If it is placed discreetly, if it is environmentally sound, if it feeds local and global interest in imaginative, innovative tourism development in Wadi Rum (and Jordan as a whole) – and, above all, if it is managed so that it injects money into impoverished local communities in Jordan, then I’m all for it. If it is another Qasr Al Sarab or Zighy Bay – well, I’m not sure Jordan needs it.

Intriguingly, Wallpaper says the scheme is both “competition-winning” and “in development by a private client”. Since Princess Haya of Jordan married Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, ruler of Dubai, I have heard speculation about investment by the Al-Maktoum in desert tourism in Wadi Rum. Similarly, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, emir of Abu Dhabi, has also been involved in Wadi Rum recently, donating oryx for a wildlife reintroduction programme there.

A scheme for tourist lodges on such a grand scale, employing a global ‘starchitect’, in a desert environment cherished by the bedu, bears the imprint of UAE influence… I wonder who that “private client” is. Anyone?

Pictured right is Khasab Fort, a small, 17th-century Portuguese-built castle that sits on the waterfront at Khasab, a tiny Omani town overlooking the Strait of Hormuz at the head of the Gulf.

Last month Khasab Fort won the International Award at the 2010 Museums & Heritage Awards for Excellence at a ceremony in London, beating off competition from the Manchester United Experience, the Heineken factory tour and a Gallo-Roman Museum in Belgium. Well done, Khasab.

I’m only mentioning it because it surprised me, in these days of PR-driven communication agendas, that the Omani tourism people didn’t send out a press release trumpeting the victory. Not a peep, in fact. I only found about it because of one line at the bottom of a press release about something else entirely.

Was it – to adopt Twitter-speak – a “PR fail”? Possibly (even, let’s face it, probably), but since I’m a charitable soul it crossed my mind that it might be a case of refreshing modesty.

Khasab is way off most visitors’ beaten track – it’s a flight or a heck of a long drive from the Omani capital Muscat, and is in fact closer to Dubai (though still a three-hour drive from there). It’s small, rocky and remote – not far, in fact, from the islet where 19th-century British sailors went “round the bend” from the heat, aridity and isolation.

Frankly, the Omani tourism authorities have got bigger fish to fry than Khasab, in the shape of their Now Is The Time! campaign, and projections which place Oman as the world’s third-fastest growing tourism market this year.

Maybe they’re just, well, playing it cool, not drawing attention to an out-of-the-way provincial heritage museum because, well, nobody goes to Khasab for the fort – they go for the fjords, the dolphins, the dhow trips.

Maybe.

Nah. PR fail.

UPDATE: As the comments on this story show, I have an apology to make – far from a PR fail, this shows just how out of touch I really am. It seems that releases went out (but I missed them) and the story was headline news in Oman (but I missed it). Apologies to all concerned for my mistake; all unfounded accusations are withdrawn and no inference should be made, other than to the author’s competence.

I was taken for a dhow ride through Musandam’s fjords…

…I stayed at the Khatt Hotel, a modest local four-star alongside hot springs in RAK’s hills, and took a 4WD trip from RAK into Wadi Bih, a rocky gorge system that cuts through the Hajar mountains, shared between Oman and the UAE.

There’s climbing, paragliding, long-distance trekking up here. The mountain culture is quite different from the coastal lowlands; you’re a million miles from Dubai and its trashy desert safaris. Khasab has got a near-monopoly on dhow rides and leisure cruises around this extraordinarily beautiful coast, but there’s no reason why RAK shouldn’t have a slice of that pie, too. The potential is huge for RAK (with or without Khasab) to become the only place offering this kind of off-the-beaten-track, nature-based independent tourism anywhere between the Mediterranean and India. In so doing, it could also pick up a substantial slice of business from visitors (not just Western) who are bored with Dubai’s high life aspirations.

Instead, RAK – like Abu Dhabi, like Qatar, like just about everybody in the Middle East – is busy chasing the top end of the market. (And not just Banyan Tree: RAK is also building Marjan Island offshore, an imitation of Dubai’s Palm/World idea.) I’m not a big fan of luxury resorts. I think they isolate tourists and are an attempt to ring-fence local culture, discouraging interaction. Perhaps in some places that’s the point. It certainly feels that way in the Gulf. But ring-fencing culture doesn’t preserve it. It corrupts it. Arguably, that’s what has got Dubai into the pickle it’s currently in, with massive misunderstanding (leading to ‘sex on the beach’, among other shenanigans), alienation, resentment, even suspicion.

RAK – and Abu Dhabi, Qatar and others – seem scared of mass tourism. They look at Dubai and Sharm El-Sheikh and shy away from midrange development, imagining it will only cause ‘problems’. Their default response is to aim squarely for the super-rich. But that’s a mistake. Independent midrange tourism could do more for RAK and the others than any amount of luxury, diverting income to the grass roots, fostering entrepreneurship, massively improving public image abroad, boosting pride, exposing locals (Asian expats, Western expats and Emiratis alike) to new ideas… but, ah. Maybe the ruling families don’t want new ideas. Maybe they think tourism will erode their culture (though British culture is still alive and kicking despite – or perhaps because of – 25 million tourists a year, as is Italian, French, Spanish, Thai, Mexican…). Maybe they think tourists only want luxury. Maybe they think nobody wants to get hot and thirsty exploring the mountains. Maybe they think the UAE hasn’t got that much to offer, and so should just play it safe by going with the tried-and-trusted formula of luxury resort developments. Maybe they think the luxury market has more economic potential – and more prestige – than the midrange.

If so, I think they’re wrong on every score.

Some cash-strapped countries have trouble seeing how the returns on independent, nature-based tourism could make it viable for them (Jordan, for instance). For the Gulf states, whose reasons for launching tourism at all have much less to do with income than image, it seems perverse to just fall back on more (and more) luxury. RAK could be the world’s next big adventure destination. It has the terrain. All that’s needed is a bit of independent thinking.