The international traveler is really spoiled for choice. Recent talk of putting a devoted tourist space station on the Moon shows once and for all, if it were ever in doubt, that there is an unending push to expand the level of choice in the market for holiday makers. For the time being though, there are so many places on Earth to which you can travel, and so much to those places, that getting through all of them would take a lifetime. So if you are itching for that first lunar package holiday you would be well advised to put your Neil Armstrong fantasies on the back burner for the time being. A lucky few men have walked on the Moon, and there is enough down here for us all to enjoy while we wait for that day to come.
In Dubai itself there are hundreds of hotels, each with their own dedicated packages to keep the voyager occupied. Some of these hotels have been built in existing tourist resorts, while others have been built as part of resorts in a broader project. Still others have had resorts go up around them. There is so much choice in Dubai that it will take a few trips to exhaust the possibilities there, let alone the opportunities elsewhere on the planet. The people with the money to make Dubai one of the most varied and exciting cities on the planet are ceaseless in the germination of their plans. The Burj al Arab hotel, one of the biggest in the world, is testament to Dubai’s ambition – and now that it has been superseded in terms of height by architects elsewhere, expect Dubai to fire back with something bigger still.
Dubai knows where it wants to be – at the forefront of everything. The people here have the money to make it happen, the ambition to give it a very good try and the competition to make sure they do not rest on their laurels. That combination means that anyone building a hotel in Dubai needs to be scrupulous in their planning before they even get to breaking ground on the construction site – it’s just not worth bothering if it won’t make people rock back on their heels and think “Now there’s something pretty special”. Each new project raises the game in some way, no matter how niche or seemingly irrelevant it might be to onlookers.
The Indian travel group Ramee has recently bought the Horizon Inn, an existing Dubai hotel with real charm, and are setting about turning it into one of the competitors for people’s attentions, among a field that is already pretty stacked. Their hope is that some modernization will make it a contender in this crowded market, and this along with its excellent location – just three kilometers from Dubai International Airport and within walking distance of the Al Ghurair Shopping Mall – means that Dubai has yet another big hitter in the hotel game.
