The Middle Eastern countries trying to rival Dubai for a winter sun holiday

It is entirely possible that, on the first Monday of this new year, none of us were very interested in headlines related to booze. And certainly, there were plenty of reasons why you may have overlooked the story – which slipped into existence amid the gloom of a winter Bank Holiday, before the world had returned to work from its Christmas reverie.

But there it was anyway, a little snippet of information, released into the void on January 2; an announcement that, with the arrival of 2023, the glitziest member of the United Arab Emirates had just scrapped its 30 per cent tax on alcohol – for a while, at least. 

“Dubai Municipality has temporarily stopped collecting the 30 per cent fee from alcoholic beverage companies for a period of one year, from the beginning of 01/01/2023 to the end of 12/31/2023,” read the tweet, using the American style of date. “The companies authorised to sell in the Emirate of Dubai have been notified of the decision.”

Apologies if you have just stifled a shrug and a yawn. Taxation matters in the Middle East – or indeed, anywhere at all – are rarely the most stimulating of conversation points.

And yet, Dubai’s tweaking of the financial burden on those who want to sell beer, wine et al within its borders – and on those who want to buy it – is more than a footnote entry at the bottom of the money pages. It is part of something bigger: the burgeoning battle to lure tourists to a corner of the planet where sun and sand have long been abundant, but competition when it comes to filling up planes and hotels has generally been less evident.

In short, Dubai has had its own way for a long time. Since the turn of the millennium, and perhaps a little before, it has been the predominant option for a Middle Eastern beach break. True, there are alternatives – Abu Dhabi, next door, has also opened its doors to western visitors; Oman, on the other side of the peninsula, has luxury resorts on Zighy Bay.

But for much of the century, if you have wanted guaranteed hot weather some seven hours’ flying time from the UK (even in January and February, the temperature rarely drops below the mid-Twenties Celsius) you have probably looked to the Emirate where five-star retreats gleam next to the world’s tallest building and the hotel with the helipad.

New rivals

In 2019 – the most recent year when the statistics were not sullied, to some extent, by the pandemic – Dubai greeted 16.7m international visitors. Some 1.17m of them – seven per cent of the total, and the third biggest national demographic within it – came from Britain.

Even in 2021, when Covid was still skulking, 420,000 Britons flew in to spend a few days in the sail-shaped shadow of the Burj Al Arab. Dubai is a huge hit with sun-seekers from these shores, and scarcely less popular with other Europeans (Germany is Dubai’s second largest European market, though the figures are roughly half the UK’s).

But something is stirring in the dunes. Dubai’s position as an obvious choice for Middle Eastern sunshine is not in question, but for the first time in 20 years, rivals are gathering around its throne. Qatar has just spent a month in the global spotlight, hosting the men’s football World Cup – and hopes to convert this raised profile into vastly higher visitor numbers.

Abu Dhabi – Dubai’s bigger, wealthier Emirati brother – does not like to sit in its neighbour’s slipstream. And most significantly for the region, Saudi Arabia has serious designs on becoming a major travel destination – and by as soon as the end of the decade.

Staying ahead

Dubai will not be nervous. Not yet. But its loosening of its taxation rules on alcohol is an early sign of a recognition that it needs to make its product more attractive to stay ahead. The shelving of that 30 per cent levy does not hugely alter the availability of, or access to, hard drinks within the emirate – they will still only really be on sale to tourists in licensed restaurants and hotel bars.

Nor does the change reflect a radical shift to more liberal attitudes. The Foreign Office still warns British travellers to “be aware that it is a punishable offence under UAE law to drink or be under the influence of alcohol in public”, while reminding them that “public displays of affection are frowned upon, and there have been several arrests for kissing in public.”

But the tax cut should, in theory, lower drink prices in a destination where a large beer can cost £12, a glass of wine more than £15; no small matter in a time when most are aware of the ascending cost of living.

It is also difficult not to view the 30 per cent reduction in the context of recent events a short flight away. Although a sporting success, graced by what is already being hailed as the greatest final in the tournament’s history, the Qatar World Cup never really escaped the wider controversies which billowed around it.

And while the sudden decision, two days prior to the opening ceremony, to ban the serving of alcohol in stadiums (outside the executive boxes) was of no significance compared to the estimated 6,500 migrant-worker deaths on the stadium construction sites – and the prohibition of even the most basic on-pitch protests about the illegality of homosexuality in the country – the beer U-turn enacted on November 18 will not have gone unnoticed by those who may be planning a beach holiday in the region. 

In fairness, Qatar also allows sale of alcohol within licensed bars, restaurants and hotels. And it might argue that, while it is hoping for a post-football boom in tourist numbers, it is not chasing the fly-and-flop demographic with which Dubai is so popular. True, Qatar has high-end beach resorts, but in developing its identity as a destination, it has taken its lead from another of the Emirates. 

Culture magnets

Where Abu Dhabi has taken a sophisticated approach to attracting visitors – opening outposts of the Louvre and the Guggenheim – Qatar has followed. The keynote museums in its capital Doha (the National Museum, the 3-2-1 Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum, the Museum of Islamic Art) may not have quite the cachet of these said two giants of the art world – but each boasts a building, dramatic and contemporary in architecture, which will appeal to those who travel with culture in mind.

Of course, there is another game in play here. The future of fossil fuels. Dubai has been remarkably successful in weaning itself off oil production. Where once, “black gold” accounted for 50 per cent of its GDP, that figure is now less than one per cent (tourism is five times more important).

The same cannot be said of Saudi Arabia, where oil adds up to 42 per cent of GDP, and 90 per cent of export earnings. Little wonder, then, that in a time of climate crisis and global worry about carbon emissions, the region’s biggest nation is also seeking to diversify its economy. From here, many roads lead to the beach.

And it is this that will most reshape the Middle East as a sunshine destination. Saudi Arabia has made no secret of its ambition to expand its tourist industry. It is writ large in “Vision 2030”, the grand reimagining of the country’s streams of income, announced in 2016, which will supposedly see a new Saudi emerge by the end of the decade.

A long way to go

Various undernourished sectors – health, education, infrastructure – are purportedly receiving vast investment. So too is tourism – an area where the capacity for growth is enormous. “Tourism contributes about 10 per cent of global GDP,” said Ahmed Al-Khateeb, the country’s Minister of Tourism, in an interview with this publication in February 2021. “But in Saudi Arabia, we are still at around three per cent. So, we have a long way to go.”

The journey down that “long way to go” began in earnest in September 2019, with the introduction of 90-day tourism visas for travellers from 49 nations, opening up a country that had previously been all but a closed shop. It also involves a new emphasis on Saudi’s past. The Diriyah Gate project, for example, is an attempt to expand access to a Unesco-listed historic site, west of Riyadh, that was the national capital between 1744 and 1818.

But mainly, it will involve attracting foreign visitors to the beach. Saudi can claim 1,640 miles of coast. Some 1,150 of them make up the straight line of its west flank, where the Red Sea divides Asia from Africa. The prime focus of the 2030 tourism drive is directed here; a shore that, in terms of holidays and hotels, has been left largely under-developed.

You will have seen some of the evidence already, if only the promotional spin. With eyes turned towards the region during the World Cup, Saudi ran regular advertisements for Neom, the “smart city” that will apparently rise up from the desert at the bottom of the Gulf of Aqaba (roughly opposite the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh).

It may already be familiar to you from the gleaming digital footage; a place somehow both shinily futuristic and claustrophobically medieval in the enclosed space of the “linear city” that will – the blueprint declares – stretch out here; 110 miles long, but only 200 metres wide.

The Red Sea Project

If this sounds like pie in the sky (or, at least, pie in the sand; little of Neom has been constructed to date), then the Red Sea Project may be rather more tethered to reality. Announced in 2017, it involves the creation of 14 luxury hotels at a site near Hanak, pretty much midway between Jeddah (Saudi’s main Red Sea port) and the border with Jordan.

Some of the nuts and bolts of the development are already in position – not least some of the new Red Sea International Airport which will service the area. Designed by the British architects Foster + Partners, it is earmarked to receive one million passengers per year by 2030. It is not yet finished, but two days of test flights were held back in July.

Is this the future of mid-haul beach breaks? Maybe. Maybe not. Saudi Arabia’s human rights record – it scarcely needs stating – is appalling; the list of concerns (including the use of torture and the suppression of protest) listed by the United Nations in its Universal Human Rights Index (uhri.ohchr.org) is lengthy.

Infinitely less important, but relevant to the sort of resorts that wish to lure western tourists, is that Saudi Arabia is a dry country, where alcohol is both prohibited and frowned upon. Cocktails by the pool? Perhaps not. 

Against this backdrop, Dubai’s quiet uncorking of a few extra crates of wine – or, at least, its willingness to reduce the cost of doing so – can be seen as less a tedious piece of financial tinkering, more a part of a broader play for tourist dollars, euros and pounds.

Where will we be on holiday in those early, dreary months of 2030? This regional rivalry will spin a few more bottles before then, but the (winter) sun, as ever, is rising in the east.