Catching up with Dubai

Small is beautiful. This has been the prevailing mood in tourism over the past decade.

We want boutique hotels, cosy B&Bs, family-run restaurants serving local fare, city breaks, modest rental cottages, cycling holidays.

We shun the sweeping all-you-can-eat hotel buffets, multinational hotel chains, giant cruise ships, carpets of sun loungers on the beach. We seek the isolated and unspoilt and we reject the over-developed and congested.

But there is growing evidence that the “big is best” model – typified by the skylines of Cancun, Benidorm and Las Vegas – is fast making a comeback. Across the world, major tourism developments are now planned or under construction that defy the fashion for modesty over brashness. Not since the 1970s have we seen such epic-scale tourism projects.

The spark for much of this about-turn is the success of Dubai, the holiday jewel of the Middle East, that has risen rapidly out of the deserts of the eastern Arabian peninsula and, in just over a decade, become one of the world’s highest-profile tourist destinations.

This is a place that is building indoor ski runs in the desert, a theme park twice as large as Florida’s Disneyworld, three skyscrapers vying to be the tallest in the world, hundreds of man-made islands in the sea, a six-runway airport.

 It’s a formula that has been a huge success: from a standing start in the early 1990s, Dubai now attracts six million visitors a year. And the infrastructure that is currently under construction aims to attract a staggering 15 million by 2010.

A growing number of countries now aspire to recreate their own Dubai, largely through the rapid construction of mega-resorts serving high spenders seeking luxury.

High-yield, low volume is the business model for these destinations: why have four tourists spending BD100 a night when you can have one willing to spend BD400?

“According to the International Tourism Business Partnership, the global tourism industry is now worth $6.5 trillion a year, and is projected to achieve 4.2 per cent annual growth over the next decade,” says Tricia Barnett, the director of Tourism Concern.

The tsunami in 2004 unexpectedly and conveniently cleared land that had been longed for by the developers. It’s particularly frightening because the enormity of the resorts are often obscured by their luxury.

Cambodia’s reputation as a less-developed, more pristine alternative to the well-trodden backpacker tracks that traverse Thailand and Vietnam could be shortlived.

The country’s largely untouched south coast is the focus of a major government-backed project to develop high-end tourism. According to local media reports, the government wants to jump start the country’s economy and help diversify the tourism industry beyond the prime attraction of the 800-year-old Angkor Wat.

A Russian financier has signed an agreement for an initial investment of $300 million to develop one of the islands. And in August, the government announced that the leases for five of the islands had been sold for $627 million.

Hainan Island, which lies off the southern coast of the Chinese mainland, is often called ‘China’s Hawaii’ due to its silky sand, palm-fringed beaches and year-round tropical climate.

That it has attracted this nickname says something about the type of tourism on offer, The main resort’s hub, Sanya, with 18 golf courses (and 10 more planned), a thick swathe of beach front and high-rise hotels mean it has the look of pretty much any identikit tropical beach resort in the world – clearly inspired by Western hotels.

Yalong Bay, a special ‘tourism national reserve’ about 19km east of Sanya, is where most of the luxury hotels are now located. International hotels chains that have located there include Sheraton, Crowne Plaza and Marriott.

What is happening in Sanya today could be a taster for things to come elsewhere as Chinese tourists get more adventurous and start to travel beyond their borders with increasing frequency and volume.

A lion surrounded by a dozen 4X4s. White-sand beaches crammed with package-holiday tourists.

Images that could easily blur the mind’s-eye vision of a dream safari holiday – and ones that Kenya has worked hard to shake-off in recent years. The strategy appears to have worked; eco-lodges are thriving, while the tourist numbers continue to swell: one million visitors will fly in this year for the first time ever.

So what to make of a new long-term plan to build three resort cities – one in the safari heartland, the others at the coast – with South Africa’s Sun City as the inspiration? A wise move or the first step on the path downmarket?

The first resort is planned for Isiolo, a backwater town 65km north of Mount Kenya. Tourism officials are studying resorts in Las Vegas, Dubai and South Africa for ideas.

Beautifully restored – and affordable – riads, trekking through vast, empty mountains, exploring ancient kasbahs ... these are the attractions that draw us to Morocco. But the Moroccan government clearly feels it has missed a trick by ignoring the potential of its coastline. That is about to change.

To reach its goal of 10 million holidaymakers by 2010, the government estimated that 160,000 new ‘tourist beds’ would be needed. The result was Plan Azur – a blueprint for six coastal resorts to be built by the end of the decade – five on the Atlantic, one on the Mediterranean.

If Dubai can build ski runs in the scorching heat of its desert, then why can’t a beach be recreated up a snow-crested mountain? That is the view of Egyptian billionair Samih Sawiris who has announced that he is to fund a huge new resort at Andermatt, complete with swimming pool and artificial sandy beach. Construction starts next year on land formerly owned by the Swiss army and will also incorporate the ubiquitous 18-hole golf course (though few can have built at such high-altitude) and tropical spa complex.