To ask why people like Dubai so much?

[moreyoudoknow]

I know loads of people who now say it's their favourite holiday destination?

What's so lovely about it? Looks too hot to me? Can go above 45 weather wise!

I like the Canary Islands because the sun burns down but it has a cool breeze... a hidden gem if you hate sweltering heat

From pictures, it looks like a city like London that just has pools?

This

People have their own standards of morality and what might be acceptable to them in one sense isn’t in another. That’s everyone’s personal decision. I was responding to the poster who said that those people who said they didn’t want to go for ethical reasons were “snobby”

Why doesn’t Egypt get the same hate with its horrendous rate of FGM?

This.

It’s a fantastic place to holiday. Amazing hotels, amazing water parks, amazing food, so much to do (shopping, desert, Burj Khalifa, Ski Dubai).
The people who are posting negatively
haven’t even been 🙄 jealousy springs to mind.

It’s a place for people with no imagination. Pastiches of the real world served up in a hermetic air conditioned package.

A "certain" type of person enjoys Dubai. Generally they have an image to maintain, they are flashy and tacky and wouldn't even consider the modern day slavery that goes on there.

You'd have to pay me to go there. My neighbour spends a month there every summer and I dont see the attraction. I am very well travelled and have lived in many countries. Plenty of places I'd like to explore but not there.

I suppose we are all different!

it doesn’t appeal to me - seems to be a lot of shopping malls and hotels. And incredibly hot!

from what I know, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way it culture or heritage. A lot of UK and US shops and chains - Starbucks and costa everywhere.

but some people will love that.

I can't see the appeal at all.
I have 2 friends who loved it.

How anyone can countenance going there during a climate crisis is beyond me. The place runs on air-con, slavery and tack.

Treat women like shite. Built on slavery. I could not give my money to their tourist industry.

I know many people who love it. Mainly for the guaranteed sunshine, luxuriousness and grandiosity of it. I found it soleless and lacking history. I preffered old Dubai which had some history!

I guess my point on ethics is all well and good but if you wanted to go you’d go- it’s not your kind of place.

Like you, OP, I can't see past the canaries. We have bought a place in lanzarote and it's the best decision we've ever made.

We travelled to Dubai for new year 2021 when Spain banned British tourists. Very last minute decision as we couldn't go to Lanzarote as originally planned.

I found it absolutely awful. We arrived in the early hours and chose a hotel close to the airport as we had our baby with us - we were then moving on to another hotel after the initial sleep.

The lobby was full of scantily clad females and men whose eyes were falling out of their heads looking at them. I suspect sex work was happening from this hotel. There were leaflets laying around on the ground outside advertising females.

Even out with that particular hotel, I just found the place sleazy. I agree with all PP in that the staff are treated so badly. There are also still some pockets of real poverty. The QE2 is docked across from some really shitty looking places which shocked me too.

It just feels so 'made up'. Nothing feels genuine about it and I felt there was a sense of hostility in the air. Don't get me wrong, the Dubai mall is quite something and the fountains outside were entertaining. Out with that I can't say anything at all blew me away.

We most certainly won't be back.

Is it because it’s shiny? Like a turd rolled in glitter.

Not been for over a decade. But grew up going there as my dad worked there. It’s changed a lot. But the things I remember loving where the guaranteed winter sun, great shopping, great restaurants, great water parks , gorgeous white beaches with a warm sea.
The med is like a toilet in comparison. Hate going to the beach anywhere in Europe now as have been spoiled.

We've been to Dubai once.

I've just asked my DP - who's chilling next to me - where he'd like to go next for our holiday. Dubai or Kerala, India. I was worried he'd say Dubai .. he can be very superficial.
He said India. I LOVE HIM!
xxx

I wouldn't want to go as I'm a woman.
I couldn't go as I'm a gay woman.

It's a country that has an awful reputation in terms of women and slavery.

I personally couldn't give condone going there.
I've had family members who go, I do quietly judge them and then distance when I can.

But it is each individual's choice.

Not high brow at all. I'm gay and married, would you recommend we go there?

It’s for people who are interested in money but not where it comes from, have scant regard for human rights, and have no taste or character. The whole idea of the place is abhorrent. Why anyone would enjoy such a boring location, quite apart from all the above, is beyond me.

Can’t imagine anywhere I’d like to visit less, not for ethical reasons, it just strikes me as being vulgar.
give me Marrakech any day

Mumsnet can be very critical of Dubai. However, this does not prevent it from being a number one destination for British people of different ethnicities.
I know at least twelve people going to Dubai in June.

I only know one person who goes, and he’s the most pretentious, self important, boring, characterless little twit I have ever met.

Spot on. Give me a bookshop in Oxford, Cambridge, York or Edinburgh any day (preferably on a frosty October morning, with the sun shining and the leaves beginning to turn).

People bang on about Dubai because it's fashionable. It's the new hip/in place. Also, many people are incapable of thinking for themselves. If their frenemies have been to Dubai, they've got to go as well.

Dubai is awful. I flew in and out on a regular basis for a couple of years while I worked in the region because it's a travel hub, and had to stay sometimes for a couple of days. I say had to, because I would never choose to stay in such a hole. It has got progressively worse in terms of traffic and pollution, vast skyscrapers continually being thrown up. The lives of the people working in unskilled or low skilled jobs there, the construction workers, cleaners and so on, from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etc are truly tragic. I haven't met a single South Asian who did well there and made comfortable money. The level of exploitation is shamefully cruel. Flying out from one of the South Asian countries I worked in there were always scores of maids sobbing at the airport, having to leave home where there were no jobs to bring in some income for the rest of their family. Many were raped, enslaved, going on to suffer health and mental problems. Unsupported by their own embassies. Truly heartbreaking.

As for the types it attracts - it's a travel hub, so full of the usual opportunists, other unsavoury types like mercenaries and those who haven't made it elsewhere - the restaurants are flashy but the quality of food etc is not good, except for Middle Eastern, or Filipino. The malls are tacky as hell and the beaches are crap. The hotels are overrated. It's been well marketed to gullible types who don't recognise a shithole when they see it, or notice the sad lives of those working there. AVOID!