Build It and They Will Come

My day started on top of the world, or at least that is how it felt when we walked into the lobby of the Burj Al Arab touted as the only seven star resort in the world. This exclusive resort, which only allows visitors if you are staying at the hotel or plan to spend at least $400 USD at the bar or high tea, is as lavishing as you might imagine. Here is where the true sense of the “world’s only, best, largest, most fascinating, etc.” came to fruition and we were spoiled for the rest of the trip.

The Dubai Convention and Tourism representatives spoiled us by hosting our meeting in the boardroom at the top of the hotel. Here we learned about all the future plans Dubai has and how it plans and hopes to continue attracting visitors all over the world.

However, their exact marketing plan for how they planned to attract these tourists was left completely unclear. The “build it and they will come” approach seemed to be the theme of the day and the attitude towards why people would come was because it is here. This marketing approach or lack thereof left me dumbfounded.

How can they plan to continue pumping money into new developments and staying on top of the world’s largest approach without any solid marketing plan? Then I began to think about places like Walt Disney World and Las Vegas. Did people think the visionaries who developed these major attractions were out of their minds as well? For example, Walt Disney literally built a theme park in swamp and cattle land in the middle of nowhere. Granted there were not many other competing tourism attractions, but I am sure he had some of the “of course people will want to come see this” attitude that seems omnipresent in Dubai.
This meeting was also probably the most important and relevant to me as a business professional. It truly opened my eyes to the business opportunities that are available in Dubai and the surrounding regions. By networking in Dubai, you have access to more world regions than by networking in London. The meeting with the Emirates Group that afternoon enforced this even more when they mentioned that Europe, Asia and Africa are all within an eight-hour plane ride from Dubai. This made me realize that maybe this build it and they will come attitude really will work if their target markets are these regions and not the US.