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?

Cropped image © Tariq Dajani

This is a blog about travel, but every so often it’s nice to take five minutes out for a thing of beauty.

I came across the work of British-Jordanian-Palestinian photographer Tariq Dajani back in 2007, when he won First Prize in the International Color Awards for his images of Arabian horses. They blew me away. Have a look – there’s a slideshow of his images, on his own website, here.

His images of Arabian hunting falcons here are works of art. Extraordinary. They remind me of 18th-century British landscape painters – Gainsborough, or (appropriately for the horse theme) Stubbs: measured, insightful, emotional.

Take time on Dajani’s website. His images of Dubai are perhaps the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

Dajani’s horses were repurposed for a 2011 calendar by Saudi Aramco World – a cultural magazine focused on the Arab and Islamic worlds, published by Aramco (the Saudi state-owned oil company) out of their offices in the US. The calendar is downloadable for free here.

Tomorrow I leave for Saudi Arabia, on assignment for Aramco World. I talked to Dajani a couple of weeks ago in Amman and I was thrilled to learn that he might be photographing one of the stories I will be researching there, in Riyadh. A real privilege, if it happens (I hope it does).

Those horses. Wow.

A tide of follow-up coverage included this opinion piece by travel writer Doug Lansky – originally posted on his Twitter stream and re-tweeted by San Francisco Chronicle travel editor Spud Hilton. It begins: “Dubai needs to make a decision. If they want to position themselves as a major tourist destination and business hub for Westerners and the rest of the world, they’re going to need to make some adjustments.”

Just to put this statement into context, here is some reaction to previous Dubai bad news stories. Back in 2007 the blog One Big Construction Site asserted: “Dubai has to decide whether it wants to become a giant Disney land devoid of its own culture.” Rashed Al Suwaidi, a reader of Abu Dhabi newspaper The National, responded to a poll in 2008 about indecency on public beaches by saying: “The UAE, especially Dubai, must decide what type of tourism it wants to encourage.”

In 2009 the blog Enduring Wanderlust mulled a change in Dubai’s decency laws, to which a reader, Kim Woodbridge, responded: “It’s important to respect the norms of the local culture. That being said Dubai needs to decide what they want to be.” A story by Mimi Chakarova for the PBS show Frontline World about prostitution and sex trafficking led one reader to assert: “Dubai needs to decide if it is a country bound by Islamic scripture or a country willing to allow what many consider immoral behavior.” As the Dubai newspaper 7Days reported the jailing of a woman for kissing in public earlier this year, one reader commented: “Dubai needs to decide whether it wants to welcome Western tourists or not.”

That’s an awful lot of deciding Dubai has to do.

In truth, of course, Dubai doesn’t have to decide anything, other than to do the best thing by its own people. Do we ever hear “France has to decide…”, “China has to decide…”, “Mexico has to decide…” Of course not. We all know French, Chinese and Mexican culture to be solid, rooted, uncontroversial. But someone digs a verbal rut and, forever after, everyone falls into it. The impression for the last twenty-odd years, since Dubai stopped being a little-known port city on a remote waterway, has been that there is some kind of dichotomy in Dubai’s make-up between being modern and being Arab, being contemporary and being Muslim, being exciting and being religious – and between all of them and also attracting mass tourism.

Such an impression is false. There is no dichotomy.

Culture is very hard to define. Broadly, you could say “it’s the way we do things here” – “we” being any group or person you fancy, “way” and “do” meaning whatever you want them to mean, “things” referring to whatever you want it to refer to, and “here” being anywhere from this room to this continent (or continents). We often use our culture as an instrument of power; imagining it to be the norm, we deride others for doing something different. By doing so, we identify ourselves as part of a majority, separate from a perceived minority. It’s very tribal.

Individual travellers know themselves to be in a minority when they travel – that’s often why they do it – so many deliberately try to suppress their own culture, in favour of learning about their hosts’ culture (and perhaps adopting some aspects of it). Andy Jarosz, who blogs at 501 Places, has written about it. By contrast many people who travel in groups, and expats, retain their majority identity, since they often deliberately surround themselves with people who share their culture. They then feel freer about ignoring – or deriding – their hosts’ culture, and asserting their own in opposition to it. This is what seems to have happened with this bikini story. Very tribal.

Faced with Dubai’s assertion of its own culture, visitors feel themselves shunted into a minority. It’s not a nice feeling, so journalists and travel bloggers write what appear (to their readers) eminently reasonable pieces insisting that something’s simply not right here, it’s all messed up and that Dubai simply must decide what it’s going to do in order to make them feel welcome – that is, part of the majority – again.

The truth is, of course, visitors to Dubai need to decide how they want to act. If they don’t care about their hosts’ culture, there’s a clear path of cultural assertion to follow.

If, however, they understand that their way of doing things is only one way of doing things – and that, much as lots of people in Britain might object to someone spitting on a bus, picking their nose or farting noisily in public (all things which, in different cultures, are perfectly normal mainstream behaviour), lots of people in Dubai object to low-cut tops and public displays of affection – then the tide of bad news/clash of culture stories coming out of Dubai might eventually slow to nothing.

There is, for example, no UAE Ministry of Tourism. Instead, each individual emirate – Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah – handles its own promotion, often without regard to what their near-neighbours are doing.

Al Qassemi draws comparison with the spectacularly successful ‘Incredible India‘ and ‘Malaysia: Truly Asia‘ campaigns, within which individual regions are free to market themselves, but always under the banner of the global tagline.

This raises interesting questions. The US is another federal country without a national tourism promotion strategy. The big names, such as Florida, New York and California, have massive tourism budgets, and therefore dominate the inbound industry – whereas the likes of Nebraska, Idaho and Oklahoma don’t, and so often miss out. Would a US Tourism Office even out the numbers and spread tourism more widely – or is it just that more people find California interesting than Oklahoma? Tough call.

In the UAE, though, it’s pretty clear to me that there is huge benefit to be gained from devising a promotional brand which encompasses the whole country. Sharjah, Fujairah and – as I’ve blogged previously – Ras Al-Khaimah have a huge amount to offer in terms of landscapes, culture and diversity that could significantly boost the rather monolithic concept of tourism currently put forward by Dubai and Abu Dhabi. There’s no logical reason why they should be denied a slice of that pie.

But the most interesting line in Al Qassemi’s piece is this: “Frankly, I have no doubt that if Emiratis were responsible for the UAE’s tourism campaigns we see on television, the name of the country would have appeared.”

Al Qassemi has a track record of saying the unsayable – his piece from 2008 “Welcome back our long-gone neighbours“, to name just one, knocked me (and lots of people I know) sideways – and this fits that bill perfectly. It’s hard to gainsay it.

To English ears, the UAE is the country with perhaps the world’s most unwieldy name, as well as its least memorable acronym: you can imagine teams of expat marketing and PR consultants, brought in to advise Dubai and Abu Dhabi on tourism strategy, tutting and shaking their heads and then saying ‘let’s just forget about the whole UAE thing, eh?’.

Those chickens have come home to roost, with a vengeance. The name Dubai – though not quite a laughing-stock – has lost much of its shine… and, without a national identity to back it up, there is no safety-net. Hence Sheikh Mohammed’s ‘Vision 2021‘ idea to develop a unified identity for the whole country.

Yet to Emiratis, of course, their nationality is a key determinant of identity, along with family, tribe and a host of others – much like the multiple layers of identity in apparently unified Western countries (I’m thinking, in the UK, not just of English/Scottish/Welsh identity, but northern/southern, urban/rural, middle/working class, and so on). It seems those expat consultants conveniently forgot about that.

When it comes to tourism promotion, local knowledge and local perspectives matter. Can you imagine the UK bringing in a team of, say, Korean media specialists to advise on 2012 Olympics promotion? Not a chance: marketing and PR to aid specific markets can help, but the overall strategy would always be home-grown.

So should it be in the Emirates. After a chaotic generation of transition, which has left the country wildly unbalanced in terms of economy, politics, culture and demography, it’s time to do some nation-building. That means easing citizenship laws, building railways and working out what it really means to be Emirati. Interesting years ahead.

The Burj Dubai

Very interesting to see this teaser in ArabianBusiness.com for a forthcoming exclusive interview with British PR supremo Max Clifford. Dubai needs a “softer image”, apparently. The place is “obsessed with money and wealth” and – worse – it’s also expensive.

Well, hold the front page.

We’ve been here before. A hundred years ago, a certain other city was on the rise. Tired, poor and huddled masses were pouring in, sometimes seeking refuge, often seeking fortunes. The established powers looked at the city and snorted in contempt, dismissing it as brash, frenetic, soulless, money-grubbing. Technological advances, and less pressure on land space, meant that the upstart was able to construct the highest buildings in the world, frequently while in pursuit of power, prestige and some element of uniqueness.

Take a look at this, from a recent book about one of those buildings:

…a vulgar contraption for producing a profit… a dubious expression of corporate power, egregious advertising… an aggressive assault on [the city's] new signature skyline…

Sounds familiar. It was written about  New York in the 1910s – but now we’re saying the same things about Dubai in the 2010s. I’ve lost count of the number of press articles – both travel stories and serious feature pieces – lambasting Dubai for its shallowness.

The Burj Dubai – the tallest building in the world (pictured) – is only what the Empire State Building once was.

The comparison doesn’t always fit – those huddled masses arriving at Ellis Island, for instance, were not denied citizenship, their culture marginalized by a ruling minority with entrenched powers based on ethnicity – but the attitudes of the outside world are strikingly similar.

Look at what New York became – then imagine what Dubai (and Abu Dhabi, and the rest) might become, if they could only match economic reform with political.

Cuddly old Max Clifford thinks Dubai needs a new image. This says more about him, and the priorities of PR, than it does about Dubai – or the real needs of this 21st-century NY-on-the-Gulf.

The image on the right – of the famous Burj Al-Arab “seven-star” hotel in Dubai – was taken by French photographer Martin Becka, using a 150-year-old camera, with techniques of developing and printing that date from the earliest days of photography. I’m not a specialist, and I don’t understand the processes – but the images speak for themselves. They are ethereal, exceptional – pushing our familiar 21st-century world back into not just the appearance of the 19th-century but, somehow, its mindset too. I look at these buildings and structures in the same way that I look at grainy, 19th-century images of people and places – as museum-pieces, detached from my life – but then I can also simultaneously hold the knowledge of Dubai’s colour, clarity and life in my head, because I’ve seen it! Being presented with such carefully mannered “old” depictions of buildings and places I have seen with my own eyes – and also touched, heard, smelled and felt – asks fascinating questions about how I interpret images of places I have NOT seen, as well as about what photography does to the people and places it depicts.

Becka’s images, somehow, show as much of the behind-the-lens world of the photographer as they do of the front-of-lens world of Dubai.

They are like painting, depicting a complete reality with far greater insight than the sharpest, clearest modern photograph.

I’ll never look at a musty, fuzzy old 19th-century photo in the same way again!

I’ll stop there. For more, see this news story on CNN, this website of Becka’s images – and google for plenty more.

UPDATE 5th November – I should have put this 3rd image (of the Dubai metro under construction) into the original post. Now, especially after Helena’s comment today mentioning Metropolis, it simply has to go in. Enjoy…

More significantly, the highly successful UAE-based low-cost carrier Air Arabia has announced that by the end of 2009 it will be launching a new airline, Air Arabia Egypt, to link several Egyptian airports with destinations in the Gulf, North Africa, Europe and the UK.

The Israel example shows the power of what the airline industry calls VFR – ‘visiting friends and relatives’. Despite the political problems, tourism to Israel has always remained buoyant, fed by special-interest religious tours in particular – but fuelled above all by VFR, especially from areas with a high Jewish population. In the UK that means, firstly, north London: even before easyJet’s launch, El Al is the only full-service national flag carrier able to maintain regular near-daily scheduled service out of Luton (and, previously, out of Stansted), in addition to its twice-daily Heathrow service. Another key VFR origin is Manchester, from where jet2 launched nonstop Tel Aviv flights in January 2009 – shortly afterwards announcing that it was doubling its peak service.

VFR out of the UK to most other Middle Eastern destinations isn’t as strong – there just aren’t that many expat Jordanians and Syrians in Britain. Air Arabia, though, has already proved that VFR works: in April 2009 it launched Air Arabia Maroc, a low-cost carrier which today links Casablanca with a clutch of francophone cities in western Europe (alongside London, Milan and elsewhere).

Its new venture, Air Arabia Egypt, on the other hand, is squarely targeting the leisure market, with multiple bases in Egypt serving different markets: Cairo and Alexandria will no doubt benefit from expanded links to Africa and the Gulf (where the large numbers of Egyptian expats brings VFR into play again), while Luxor, Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada will likely attract service chiefly from northern and western Europe. The three Air Arabias will also, no doubt, link up, making it possible to fly in a series of hops from the Atlantic to the Bay of Bengal, low-cost all the way.

Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary

The new venture also kick-starts a fascinating contest. easyJet, a pioneer of low-cost travel in Europe, already serves Egyptian holiday airports such as Sharm and Hurghada from the UK. It will, it seems, soon have to compete with Air Arabia, a pioneer of low-cost travel in the Middle East. Two highly successful carriers from different parts of the globe are about to meet head-to-head. Be sure that Ryanair will be watching closely.

Beside all of this, the Gulf (although aided by market protection) is able to support six more low-cost carriers – Sama, Nas, Felix, Bahrain Air, FlyDubai and Jazeera. The last of these has announced that it is searching for a new regional hub. Will it be Beirut? Istanbul? Perhaps Athens?

As Middle East airlines start reaching out towards Europe, expect an ever-intensifying clash of low-cost cultures in the months ahead.

As well as the new metro – which opens on 9th September (9/9/09 – don’t ask me what the significance is, other than a good headline) – there are several new bus routes coming in. But standing around by the side of the road in 50-degree heat isn’t very pleasant, so Dubai has air-conditioned its bus shelters.

(It’s so Dubai. But don’t get it mixed up with Dubai’s air-conditioned beach, which has now been abandoned, thank heavens…)

Good news is no news, so I missed it when the a/c shelters were put in.

But bad news sells – so it makes the National when the a/c shelters break down.

However, as the manufacturers pointed out, they only fail when it gets really hot outside… So, um, that’s OK then… The Kipp Report had it best: “The air-conditioners ‘trip at intervals’. Which intervals? Like, noon?”

Beyond Dubai, think of the applications: heated bus shelters in Britain, bear-proof bus shelters in Canada, bullet-proof bus shelters in New Orleans, life-support bus shelters in the Aussie outback…

Come on, give me some more ideas. Let’s get the world waiting for a bus in comfort…

Ink are market leaders, producing 30+ inflight magazines for airlines all over the world, and have won fistfuls of design awards, including for Ryanair. It’s easy to see why. Gulf Air are not exactly the most prestigious of clients – a small, struggling state-owned carrier at the unfashionable end of the Gulf – but rather than copy the kind of instantly forgettable pap that’s churned out for Etihad and Emirates by Dubai-based magazine publishers, they’ve instead created something worthy of newsstand sale. My articles aside, it’s a genuinely interesting monthly about Middle East life and culture, with a dash of Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur and occasionally Paris and London thrown in. Take a look.

Do inflight magazines matter? My impression is they do. If they’re rubbish (which, let’s face it, most still are), all they do is reinforce to Ms/Mr Traveller the sense that both the airline and the destination it ‘represents’ are rubbish: at worst (stand up Air Malta and Saudi Airlines), they turn the airline and the destination into a laughing stock. At best (Gulf, Swiss, Air Canada) they lead you intelligently into the culture and the outlook of your destination while still in midair.

And for the hard-pressed travel writer, inflight magazines are a godsend: I write for 8 or 10 of them, and would find it that much harder to make ends meet without them.