Abstract
Dubai is the second largest of the seven city states in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with Abu Dhabi as the largest. Since Dubai has proven reserves of only 4 billion barrels of oil, the government decided to implement a new strategy of economical diversification in order to get out of the petroleum industry dependency.
The main focus of this strategy is to turn the city state into a major financial center and tourism location. This strategy was successful with the building of innovative real estate complex such as the “Burj Dubai” the world tallest building or the manmade islands “Dubai world” (with the appearance of a world map) and “the Palm””.
The success of this strategy has been favorized by the development of the national airline company “Emirates” which turned Dubai into an enormous hub, mainly for passengers in transit from Europe to Asia (27 million a year). Dubai then became a major “flying through” country which was an essential conclusion for the future strategic planning of the country. “Indeed the main objective was no longer only to bring more people to come in Dubai but also to make them stay longer as the average stay in Dubai was lower than in equivalent places around the world.”
In order to answer to this objective and to become the choice destination for tourists all over the world, the Dubai development and Investment Authority came up with this solution:
The creation of a globally competitive entertainment and leisure hub that would not only increase the number of tourists attracted to Dubai (8% growth per year) but would also increase the length of their stay.
This idea was the founding principle of Dubai Land, the world's largest theme park and entertainment center, able to compete with the most fashionable leisure and entertainment industry places such as Las Vegas, Orlando, Disneyland or Macao and Hong Kong… with a maximum final capacity of 15 million tourists a year.
This theme park will be an attractive place for people all over the world looking for entertainment and experience, especially for people in countries close to Dubai. Indeed the entertainment industry is not or lowly present in this area of the world in terms of theme park with hospitality and entertainment infrastructures.
The project was initiated in 2002, and the delivery will intervene in December 2010. In order to successfully reach this deadline and due to the enormous size of the project, Tatweer the company behind DubaiLand and its board of directors had to fight several challenges. These challenges were the establishment of a strategy and key priorities, how to implement it and to communicate it with others.
