Middle East musing as Dubai delivers the goods

by Martin Moodie |
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Martin Moodie

Martin Moodie is the Founder & Chairman of The Moodie Report.

I’m 40,000 feet above the Black Sea close to the Bulgarian coastal city of Burgas, some three hours from London on the way back from Dubai. Outside it’s 63 degrees Celsius below, roughly the temperature in Dubai today when I left.

Ok, ok I exaggerate… but in the 20 years I have been visiting the Emirate, I’ve never known it as cold as it was today. Certainly I’ve never seen it so wet.

[The view from my taxi en route to Dubai International Airport]

The rains that hit Dubai last night and continued for much of the next day flooded much of the inner city, causing chaos on the roads and making the journey to the airport an interesting experience. To see taxis practically aquaplaning through streets that are usually baking in sunshine was a surreal experience.

My taxi driver finally gave up after getting stuck behind several broken down vehicles a few minutes from the airport and I had to make the rest of the way on foot, across sodden muddy grass and flooded footpaths. Just after take-off from Dubai, passengers on one side of my British Airways aircraft saw a flash of light and heard a big bang as we were struck by lightning. Me? I slept through the whole thing.

Terminal 1 (the Sheikh Rashid Terminal) is now a slightly dated old lady, featuring painfully long and slow immigration (surely they should be called emigration?) queues and replicated security procedures.

With various multi-billion Dollar terminal and airport projects coming on stream over the next few years, Dubai Airports knows the easing of the capacity crunch can’t come soon enough but the current pressures have barely held back the phenomenon that is Dubai Duty Free.

This place simply seethes with activity. Not a department or category seems to be anything but packed with shoppers.

It’s an amazing place to ‘people watch’ not just for the rampant consumerism but the countless little touches that make Dubai Duty Free such an extraordinary success.

Two short anecodotes. When I arrived at Dubai International Airport and bought a couple of bottles of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc (Cloudy Bay and Hunter’s) at the Arrivals store, plus some chocolates, the supervisor came over to me and relieved me of the burden, saying he would carry them to the counter.

When I paid, the cashier (a young man from Kashmir called Ali Shah) could simply not have been more helpful, polite or knowledgeable.

Similarly, on the way out when I bought a gold jewellery item as a Christmas present, a courteous Sri Lankan salesman called Faizal displayed detailed, credible and altogether helpful knowledge about gold. He also showed a level of engagement and unforced courtesy that not only clinched the sale but left me feeling enriched by an experience that had had exactly the opposite effect on my credit card.

I mention these ‘Front Line’ names because it matters and they matter. Dubai Duty Free staff are drawn from all over the world. It’s an absolute testament to the quality of (and commitment to) their training that one finds such consistent warmth and knowledge among the staff.

I also noted with pleasure a section within Dubai Duty Free’s hugely popular destination merchandise department (below) called ‘Smiles n Stuff’.  This features a range of beautifully coloured and crafted gift items handcrafted by the children of Al Noor Training Center for Special Needs (incidentally, when the security man saw me taking pictures he walked over and asked if I would like my photo taken? For someone who has been chased away from half the duty free stories of the world for the sin of snapping the odd photo, this was a pleasant change).

The positive shopping experience brought a suitably upbeat conclusion to an enjoyable week in Dubai. The annual MEDFA Conference was one of the best I have attended (bravo to MEDFA, its organisational partner TFWA, and its two moderators, our own Dermot Davitt – who, and I promise this is not bias talking, just gets better and better each year – and John Sutcliffe) and the Dubai Duty Free Golf World Cup (alas in which I could not participate) was once again a brilliant experience, marked by incredible organisation and hospitality.

[Dermot Davitt, left, chats with Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths, the stand-out speaker of the MEDFA Conference]

[Participants in the Dubai Duty Free Golf World Cup receive a warm welcome at Dubai International Airport]

The Middle East Exclusive Exhibition would, I think, benefit from being housed in the same facility as the Conference (held at the Dubai Duty Free-run Jumeirah Creekside Hotel) rather than being isolated a few miles away (at the Dubai World Trade Centre).

[H.H Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum officially opens Middle East Exclusive, underlining high-level local support for the event]

Justin Boutros, the owner of Channels Exhibitions, which organises the event, is a good and determined man and it is to his eternal credit that he has developed the event as much as he has. But it still needs help – perhaps it and MEDFA should move to a different timing, well away from the successful TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes? Yet you’re damed if you do, damned if you don’t. MEDFA, after all, works brilliantly in November, linked as it usually is to the Dubai Duty Free Golf World Cup. That spells Catch 22 in anybody’s language.