Destination: Dubai
Illuminating ‘Dark Travel’
by Frank Bures | 06.18.07 | 1:45 PM ET
The "Lonely Planet 2007 Blue List" and Adam Russ's "101 Places Not to Visit" spur Frank Bures to contemplate why travelers don't always want to be delivered from inconvenience.
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Yahoo! BuzzTheme Parks Bound for Mumbai and Dubai
by Jim Benning | 05.02.07 | 3:24 PM ET
Here at the Planet Theme Park desk, it’s hard to keep up with all the projects in the works, but we try. In the latest news, a $100 million Bollywood theme park is planned for the Indian city of Mumbai—or Bombay if you’re a certain UK newspaper apparently still in denial about that whole name change thing that was so 1995.
Dubai on the Cheap?
by Jim Benning | 03.14.07 | 2:40 PM ET
It sounds like an oxymoron, but it seems that budget travel opportunities are at least beginning to emerge in Dubai. The Economist notes that the country’s first easyHotel is being built, promising modest accommodations at rates of up to 20 percent below its competitors. What’s more, a total of six easyHotels are planned for Dubai as part of an expansion into the region by the London-based chain. The first property is due to open next year.
‘The Cultures That Produced Dubai and Las Vegas Surely Must Have Something in Common’
by Michael Yessis | 01.09.07 | 8:40 AM ET
Seth Stevenson believes Dubai’s “media moment” has passed. “The flurry of breathless write-ups —in Sunday travel sections and glossy lifestyle magazines—has come and gone,” he writes in the latest edition of Slate’s Well-Traveled. “We’re on to the next destination already. (Laos. Yemen. Low-altitude space orbit.)” Yet Stevenson couldn’t resist Dubai’s “profound wackiness,” and set-forth on a trip that, in typical Stevenson fashion, he mines for insight and laughs.
Exporting Dubai
by Terry Ward | 11.02.06 | 8:46 AM ET
For me, visiting Morocco has always meant hanging with my host family in Fes (I studied Arabic there in 2003), seaside sardine feasts for a few bucks in Essaouira and strolls through the medinas to soak up the chaos and color. But when you’re Emaar—Dubai’s largest property group, backed by the ruling Maktoum family—Morocco is just another stage for a decadent Arabian playground, replete with a golf-course-cum-ski-resort, luxury shopping streets and fake beaches. Never mind that the construction site, Oukaimeden—a small provincial ski resort in the High Atlas mountains, not far from Marrakech—is nowhere near the United Arab Emirates.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Skimpy Skirts and Thunderbolts
by Michael Yessis | 10.27.06 | 11:30 AM ET
There’s a hint of fear in the air, but, as always, we’re still hitting the road. This week the Zeitgeist leads to Paris, Dubai, Iowa, Mexico City and the most scenic toilet in the world. Let’s go.
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Japanese Tourists Succumb to “Paris Syndrome”
* I’ve seen a bit of coverage of this story this week, and the New York Post gets the best headline award: Paris Leaves Japanese French Fried.
World’s Least Favorite Airline
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Ryanair
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Beyond Skimpy Skirts, a Rare Debate on Identity
* Hassan M. Fattah’s story explores the limits of multiculturalism in Dubai.
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The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir
* Two weeks in a row at the top for Bryson’s memoir of growing up in 1950s Iowa.
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Hotels Ditch Imposing Desks for Friendly ‘Pods’
* Three reasons why: To lure younger customers, to improve employee productivity and, of course, to increase revenue.
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Apple’s Gift to Travelers: Magsafe Airline Power Adapter
Mosque Tourism in Dubai
by Jim Benning | 10.25.06 | 8:10 AM ET
Apparently it’s all the rage—at least at Jumeirah Mosque. Tours aimed at boosting understanding of Islam among Western tourists have expanded, according to an AP story, “from irregular gatherings of a dozen people to five-times-weekly tours of a hundred or more.” And what’s more, “Now, the government-linked center wants to expand inside the United Arab Emirates and beyond with an eye on the more than 1 million Westerners, mostly Europeans, who visit every year.”
Palm Islands, Dubai
by Ben Keene | 08.11.06 | 6:41 AM ET
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Please Enjoy Your Local “Irish Pub Concept.”
by Michael Yessis | 03.17.06 | 11:04 AM ET
No matter where you are this St. Patrick’s Day, chances are high that you’re near an Irish pub. That’s no accident. “In the last 15 years, Dublin-based IPCo and its competitors have fabricated and installed more than 1,800 watering holes in more than 50 countries,” Austin Kelley writes in a fascinating story this week in Slate. “Guinness threw its weight (and that of its global parent Diageo) behind the movement, and an industry was built around the reproduction of ‘Irishness’ on every continent—and even in Ireland itself.”
How Did the Hamburger Take Over the World?
by Jim Benning | 06.07.02 | 1:37 AM ET
Travels With Daisy
by Jim Benning | 05.09.02 | 10:22 PM ET
After she was famously kidnapped and released by the Taliban last fall, journalist Yvonne Ridley was accused of being a “bad mother” to her nine-year-old daughter, Daisy. The experience rattled Ridley. She re-examined their relationship and realized she didn’t even know Daisy’s favorite color. So she decided to take Daisy traveling. “We basked on Bondi Beach, shivered in an air-conditioned Dubai taxi, got drenched in torrential rain in Afghanistan and sweated in the stifling heat of Lahore,” Ridley writes in the Observer. “We had an amazing time together but, more importantly, I have emerged from a wonderful bonding experience with a child I am very proud to call my daughter.”
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